Overlord: Remnant
by Inquisitor Halbread
Summary: Long before tales of Maidens and Wizards, there were tales of a different sort. Tales of men and women who amassed armies and conquered the world. There was one common theme across those stories. Evil Always Finds a Way.
1. Intro Interruptus

So while I try to actually write for my stories, I figured that I might as well put this here. Its a bit short but its more of a prologue.

Hope you enjoy the Writing

Comments and Criticisms welcome.

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 _Legends. Stories scattered through time. Mankind has grown quite fond of recounting the exploits of heroes and villains, forgetting so easily that we are remnants, byproducts, of a forgotten past._

 _Man, born from dust, was strong, wise, and resourceful, but he was born into an unforgiving world. An inevitable darkness—creatures of destruction, the creatures of Grimm—set their sights on man and all of his creations. These forces clashed, and it seemed the darkness was intent on returning man's brief existence to the void._

 _However, even the smallest spark of hope is enough to ignite change. And in time, man's passion, resourcefulness, and ingenuity led them to the tools that would help even the odds. This power was appropriately named "Dust."_

 _Nature's wrath in hand, man lit their way through the darkness. And in the shadow's absence came strength, civilization, and most importantly, life._

 _But even the most brilliant lights eventually flicker and die. And when they are gone, darkness will return._

 _So you may prepare your guardians, build your monuments to a so-called "free world," but take heed. There will be no victory in strength._

 **But perhaps victory is in the simpler things that you've long forgotten. Things that require a smaller, more honest soul.**

Bah! _A more honest soul?_ I've heard Elves be less vague than that! Pointy-eared layabouts.

 **What?**

 _... Gnarl. What are you doing here?_

I've come to set the record straight! All it is with you two is " _Human Will this"_ and " _Darkness that"_. You've both forgotten true Evil!

 **You know this... fellow, Salem?**

 _He is just a nuisance. Ignore him._

Ha! I heard that! Just because I am older than both of you put together, doesn't mean I'm going deaf!

 _No, It just means you're going senile._

If you weren't so easy on the old eyes, I might have taken that personally.

 _What._

 ***snickers***

 _Laugh it up! At least I don't pretend that I need help walking._

 **Hey, It completes my image of the wise professor of Beacon.**

If I had a coin for every fool that tried to appear wise then I'd have enough gold to buy at least five Dark Towers.

 _If you are going to say anything of importance then get it over with._

You of all people should know that legends are sometimes true. And I'm here to tell you that this story isn't to so with " _Honest souls"_ as paradoxical as that is, or even "Darkness consuming everything". No. This story is about the continuation of a legend.

A long time ago, Long before the stupid peasants of the world decided to call it Remnant out of some misguided attempt at feeling sorry for themselves, there was a land of wonder and magic. It was a land of beauty and peace... before it was thankfully conquered and set fire to by a person of immense power and Evil. This man was known as, The Overlord. He was the most recent in a long line of Overlords, all great at spreading mayhem and dominating their enemies, and as his army of loyal minions pillaged and destroyed the _sickeningly_ beautiful lands, he had stopped in thought. Why did people resist him? Why had no one wanted to be conquered? Why were they content in their lands of peace, _disgusting rainbows and horribly sweet woodland creatures?_

After many days of thought. The Overlord finally realised that it was because people were unhappy. He then tried everything to make the people happy with his total domination of their insignificant lives. He paid the people to ignore and tell him about trouble makers in his lands. He turned down proposals for silly things like "representation" and "Equality" because if he knew anything, It was that silly things like personal freedom only made people more upset. He had even burned down things called "slums" which seemed to make everyone, Including the people who lived in them, unhappy. None of this worked, ungrateful sots that they were, didn't appreciate the Overlord's efforts on their behalf. And so the Overlord finally concluded that if he couldn't make people happy, then he would have to make people stop being unhappy.

However, there was no way he could ever have enough minions to make sure that everyone was happy, all the time. And... However misguided the Overlord was, he wasn't one for leaving things as they were. So, after many suitably wacky and positively Evil adventures with his White haired sidekick, the Overlord finally found the solution. He had found a way to create an entire species of Dark creatures that were completely loyal to him and perfect for his needs. They were strong, fearless, endless and could sense the very unrest and fear in their enemies! These creatures were great at keeping the unruly peasants in line but unfortunately, the Overlord wasn't the best at naming things and so he had hired a ten-year-old child to name his new creations. At that moment, The child's imagination for destruction, mayhem, and Evil sounding names had failed him and could only think of what the "Grimm Overlord" had been nicknamed by the people in his lands.

And so, These creatures were forever known as "The Grimm".

 _Sigh. Does this story have a point to it?_

Yes! Don't interrupt!

Now, where was I? Ah, yes...

 _Look, Gnarl. Skip to the point. We were in the middle of something here._

 **As much as I hate to agree with her, We were in the middle of something.**

Fine! Ok, skip ahead a few generations, assassination, marriages and convoluted time travel and we get to the last Overlord. As he was dying, which was an unfortunately common occourance when it came to Overlords, The wizard who fought him cast a spell on the Overlord's family line and his very position as Overlord. The spell made it so that no member of his family would be able to pick up the Mantle of Overlord again and that unless they did, there would be no Overlord. Of course, this meant that the Grimm had no master and the infinite army of dark creatures did what they wanted and started killing people, knocking down houses and tearing up lawns for all time up to the current day, not that the _good_ wizard had thought of it at the time.

 ***cough***

Either way, that was centuries ago and the Overlord has never arisen since, leaving the world to forget that they even existed in the first place. As if the world could just dismiss Evil as a bad dream, remembering unicorns and fairies but not the ones who set them on fire.

 _So why are you... No. No. You can't be serious._

 **Why are you saying that?**

 _You **can't** be serious about that._

Oh, But I am. You see, this story isn't about small, honest souls or even about Darkness consuming humanity.  
This story is about action, family, and Evil!

Because Evil Always Finds A Way.

 _ **Overlord: Remnant**_


	2. 1: A Chance Meeting

Merry Christmas people!  
It took me a while to write this so I hope that it has some quality to it.  
I also hoped that I didn't make anyone OC in this...  
Either way. I hope you enjoy the writing!

Jaune marveled at the view of the Ursa disintegrating. He had never realised how even the evaporation was across the body of the Ursa. There was no piece of it that dissolved faster than the rest.  
This was one of many thoughts that flew through Jaunes head.

There was elation at having finally stood up to Cardin. There was the fear of having faced an Ursa that was larger than he was. There was the satisfaction of crushing an enemy beneath his supposedly superior skill.  
 _Dammit..._  
The frustration of recognizing which thought was due to his family legacy.

Jaune Arc sighed. Once again a moment was ruined by another megalomaniacal thought. It surprisingly didn't happen that often since he had left for Beacon but his family had a history of random Megalomaniacal thoughts. Moment of satisfaction ruined, Jaune looked around at the clearing he was in.

It didn't look very different from how the Forever Fall forest normally looked like. The trees around him were decorated by all manner of red and gold leaves, giving the impression of an eternal Autumn. The ground was covered in the same leaves with the grass being a mixture of green and gold. Jaune could have waxed some poetic saying about how the forest had made him feel but the honest truth was that it was rather boring after a while. Without anyone in sight, it looked like a pretty forest. It was nice to look at but it quickly fell into the background of what went on inside forests.

"Sigh. Might as well get on with it." Jaune said to the empty air as he grabbed an empty Jar and went over to a nearby tree.  
Despite the stunt of Jaune hitting Cardin with a jar of sap being an act of terrifying courage, it was actually _his_ jar of sap and he needed to hand in one to Professor Peach for not only a passing grade for the assignment but the whole semester as well.  
Why the Professor needed a sap that, while tasting delicious, caused severe indigestion if uncooked was unknown to Jaune.  
 _It could be a practical lesson..._ Reasoned Jaune. Teaching the young Hunters of Grimm that research was its own reward. Of course, with the amount that Jaune could see the student's drinking, especially Nora, it could be a very messy lesson.

 _The bathroom is going to be occupied for the whole week, isn't it?_ Jaune sighed to himself as he affixed the specialized tap to the tree to harvest the sap.  
He didn't blame his friends and the other students for not doing any research on the sap before the trip as he hadn't done any either. He had simply remembered it from his school days and he knew that Botany was not an important subject in a combat school for prospective Grimm killers.  
Who needed to know what the properties of a sap from a tree that only grew in one specific forest were when you could learn the weak spots on a Beowolf or how to unjam a gun?

That was the problem after all.  
Jaune Arc had never gone to a combat school. He had never learned the weak points of Grimm or the intracies of learning to take care of a blade. He had learnred about maths, languages, literature, history, economics and statescraft.  
Where everyone on his team had went to a combat school. Jaune had gotten a regular education at a high school.  
That was what happended when you were the heir to a Mistrali noble house.

The official story was that Mistral was a kingdom where only the rich and connected could thrive in mistral. That was an outsider perspective and quite understandable considering only the natives really knew the truth.  
Mistral was also a kingdom of family and politics. The idea of family was so ingrained into their culture that the Kingdom's council was made completely obsolete the moment it had been formed, filled with representitives of all the prestidgous noble houses who ran the kingdom anyway. In this mess of families and nobles controlling the country, there was one family that stood head and shoulders above the rest.

The House of Arc.

Did they have amazing business acumen, amassing a fortune of millions of Lien?  
No, not more than any other Noble family.  
Was their connections so ironclad that everyone was connected to the family in some way?  
No. By Mistral standards, Jaune and Mistral itself had been blessed by having a remarkably small family.  
Did they scheme circles around all other competitiors and use a springboard of implied favors and half honored promises to the top of the political pile?  
No. Jaune's family, and himself if he believed some of the family servants, had a low tolerance for schemes and convoluted plots.  
So why did Jaune's family somehow dominate a country without any of the skills neccesary?

If you had asked any other family why, you would have gotten half answers and some outright refusals to answer.  
Jaune had looked into his family history out of curiosity and what he found was mildly disturbing...

When the Arcs weren't in power, bad things happened to Mistral. Burnt down towns, terrorised citizens and general mayhem. Whenever someone had managed to Betray/outwit/poison/confuse the Arcs out of power, his ancestors would always swear to reattain their birthright and conquer Mistral all over again.  
Jaune was part of a family of Tyrants, dictators and conqureres with surprisingly good PR. The Arcs were Mistral's one steady rock in a sea of betrayals and politics and Jaune was supposed to be inheriting the leadership of the rock.

Jaune didn't want that, he wanted to be a hero like his Great-grandfather Julius Arc. Even if he became a hero by accident.  
So Jaune had asked if he could study to be a hunter... And apparently the response to the only heir out of eight births went from mild disencouragement to outright denial.  
He had been taught to lead the snake pit that was high-level Mistral politics when his first instinct was to tell everyone that they were stupid for fighting over stupid things. So Jaune had run away to study to become a hunter.  
Specifically to Vale where no one would know what being an Arc meant.

With no identity, he didn't have the papers to get into Beacon. To get new papers, he needed money and he had no money. Thankfully, he had found an abandoned and broken down bar just across the corner from the street where he was thinking about what to do. After finding it in a surprisingly good condiditon, he had investigated the place and found a large safe. Thankfully, whatever had happened to the place had also broken the lock on the safe. Seeing as no one apparently owned the money, Jaune took it to pay for his new transport papers.  
Now he was at Beacon, getting sap from a tree that he had learned about from 5th grade.

It was only a few minutes later that the tree had fully filled the sap jar, and a puddle on the floor to draw any Ursa away from him as he made his way back to the school. As he closed the jar, now filled with deicious indigestion sap, he started to move away, darting around a tree. Or at least, until he tripped and fell over something around knee height.  
Which happened embarasingly often.  
Except this time the object yelled as it fell over as well.

"Rotten humans! Never looking where they are going..."  
Jaune felt himself stop at the voice. It sounded old and more than a little spiteful. It also sounded oddly familiar.  
Looking in the direction of the shouting, Jaune was surprised to see something that he could describe as a walking walnut with ears. The small creature was slightly higher than knee height. It had grey skin with yellow eyes that looked like they glowed slightly along with what seemed to be some sort of white beared. It was also had a hunched over posture that was covered in what seemed to be old cloth with clawed feet and hands that emerged from the folds of the robe. It also had a stick with a lantern attached to it, slightly crooked from what Jaune guessed was him tripping over the creature. It was also mumbling malevolently.

"Uhh..." Jaune began eloquently. "I'm sorry for tripping over you?"  
At the question, the creature looked directly at him, malevolence clear on his features and yellow eyes boring into Jaune's blue ones. They stayed that a moment until suddenly the creature seemed to go straight to a shocked expression and then a sheepish one.  
"No problem. I-I didn't see where I was going." the creature said with a tinge of nervousness.

Jaune nodded. That would make two of them.

Jaune got to his feet.  
"Look. I'm really sad about knocking you over..." Jaune struggled with the name.  
"Gnarl. A pleasure to make your aquaintence, young master." The creature said, a grin now stretching across its face. Jaune was surprised at the use of a title like that outside of Mistral but it wasn't too important.  
The creature, Gnarl, looked at him with a curious look.  
"Say... Would you happen to be related to the Arc's by any chance?"  
Jaune's eyebrow raised. That was the first time anyone had mentioned a possible relation to the rest of his family and it was from some small... Faunus maybe?  
"Yes, I am. Why do you ask?" Jaune asked, hopefully portraying his uncomfortableness with this line of questioning. "And, Just what are you?"  
Gnarl's grin seemingly went from ear to ear and it was kind of disturbing to someone used to normal smiles such as Jaune.  
"Why young master, I am a minion. Someone who deign  
s to serve their master however they can. I knew the Arc's rather personally you know."

Gnarl gained what Jaune saw as a whimsical expression that would occasionally appear on his Grandfather's face.  
"Ahh yes... A wonderfully determined family. Oh the screams of their enemies were delightfully loud from the... well really anywhere really."  
Jaune winced as he was reminded of what Bianca, his sister, had done to the boy who had cheated on her. It does seem that Gnarl at least knew of the Arcs.  
"But that's enough musing of the good old days. I actually... found something of the Arcs and I've been looking for the right Arc to tell about where it is."  
Gnarl gestured his hands in a sweeping motion as he dipped slightly.  
"So, young master. Would you like to reclaim your family's old treasures?"

Jaune cursed internally. It was Friday and he had a mountain of homework from Professors Port and Ooblek to do over the coming weekend but his grandfather's lesson on these things immediately came to mind.

 _"Jaune. If a mysterious traveler tells you that an ancient treasure in a dangerous location is an Arc possession, you should probably believe him. We owned a lot back in the day and they got scattered in the weirdest and most dangerous places. Also, if you get the offer to join in on a quest to claim it, you should jump at the chance. Quests are a good place to get significant monies and "accidentally" fall on top of your female group members while saving their lives..."_

That was normally about the time when Grandmother started yelling at him about giving out dangerous life advice while Grandfather defended by stating that it works and gesturing to dad a lot and then Grandmother would suddenly go quiet.

Jaune sighed.  
"Look. I would love to go but I can't today. How about tomorrow? It's the weekend and I'll be able to go on a life-endangering trip then."  
Gnarl bowed towards him.  
"As you wish Master."  
Jaune nodded, smiling.  
"Great! Now if you don't mind, I have to go turn in this Jar of Sap. I can't be a Hero if I fail out of course."

Jaune walked away, ignoring Gnarl's sudden coughing fit.  
 _Shame. I hope he is going to be okay. He lookes pretty old._ Jaune thought to himself.  
 _Hey, at least I have this!_ Jaune thought with a victorious smile.

The smile vanished as he put his hand in the pocket where he stashed the Jar of Sap.  
Instead of feeling the round surface of the Jar. He felt the jagged edges of Shards of glass and the stickiness of the Forever Fall sap.  
 _Dammit..._


	3. 2: A Gladiator's Perspective

Hello!  
Before we get started, I've got a lot of questions about OC characters and tribes.  
Let me answer dem questions here.

There wont be OC minion hives as there is really no holes that the current four minions leave open for an entire hive to be appropriate. The Grimm were made for an endless army in this story rather than the minions not being of high enough quality.

I thanks everyone for their offers of help for OC characters but I don't require it at the moment. If I really need help, I will ask as there won't actually be that many OCs and ant that are in the current plan have been, well... planned. I thank you for the offers though.

There are some butterflies though so don't expect everything to be the same.

Hope you enjoy the writing!  
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" _Ugh. Who made Algebra in the first place?"_  
Pyrrha Nikos, or more formally Pyrrah of Nikos XIII, was known as one of the best duelists of her age group. She understood the ins and outs of hundreds of weapons, including her personal ones. She could list off all the types of Grimm that were native to Mistral _and_ their weakness off by heart. She had dueled hundreds of people her age and older, besting both martial skill and whatever had "fortuitously occurred". She had done so well that she was known throughout Remnant which was one achievement she could actually live without.

The name "Pyrrha Nikos" was probably inspiring naive young girls to risk their health against the Grimm or in the even-more-dangerous Mistral Tournament.  
All of these accomplishments and she still didn't know how to use a Jacobian matrix...

She spared the infuriating homework another look, glaring at the letter-infested maths that threatened her with unending torment if she tried to understand it. She had no problem with the numbers of maths, but the addition of virtually the whole alphabet made things significantly more confusing. Temporarily giving up on the maths soup, Pyrrah looked around the room to how the rest of her team was doing. The room had come with four beds and desks, one for each member of JNPR, along with assorted shelves. Jaune had almost immediately come up with the idea to put all the desks together to create one massive table in the middle of the room and pushing the beds to the sides of the room so that the inevitable group effort on homework was as easy as possible. That was exactly where she saw Lie Ren, sitting at his portion of the desk and reading a history textbook, no doubt preparing the Essay for Professor Oobleck that was due for later this week. Nora Valkyrie, however, had spread out over her bed and Pyrrah could hear faint snoring.

Pyrrah couldn't help but smile. Ren and Nora were just as bad at Algebra as she was and Pyrrah took solace in the fact that she just wasn't missing something obvious that Ren had found for himself. There was simply no help to be had until their leader came back from his latest attempt to woo Weiss Schnee.  
 _How could someone so clever be so dim at times?_  
That was a thought that she had often about Jaune Arc. He had extremely high marks in almost every non-combat subject and average marks in most of the others. The only place he had failed was Ms Goodwitch's combat class, where they actually fought instead of learning about fighting. So whenever Nora, Pyrrah, or Ren had problems with homework, Jaune would help with a smile on his face and an understanding attitude.

Although she hadn't known it at the time, she was happy that she had accurately predicted that he would be a good leader. He was also a good student and despite his denials that it was just because of his previous schooling, she could see it when he was in class _and_ when they trained together.  
Especially when they trained together.

She had been surprised at how happy she was when Jaune had asked if he could still train with her after that Monday in Forever Fall. She had been even happier when she had seen how much progress he had made in a week of training. He had actually improved, even if it was only slightly. Progress was progress, no matter how small as her mom used to tell her when she had trouble training for her first tournament. The first tournament that she had lost and the first and only she had tried to win honorably.

There were a few, huge problems with Jaune's fighting style, however. One such problem was that he tried to fight like a knight, or rather how the stories said how they fought. During their first spar on Tuesday night, she had purposefully left herself open to more unsavory tactics. An unbalanced leg that could collapse from a well-timed kick to the knee, an overextended swing that could result in her arm being grabbed, an unbalanced dodge that if Jaune had pushed forward would have knocked her over. Those were only some of the mistakes that she purposefully made and Jaune hadn't taken advantage of a single one. While she had to admit that some of them went over his head, she had seen him notice others. Pyrrah had seen Jaune almost react to the weaknesses that he saw before he stopped himself. His leg had twitched when he had seen her vulnerable leg and he had started forward slightly before stopping. It was subtle but a trained fighter like Pyrrha could see that he was actively stopping himself from taking advantage, keeping himself to a traditional "knight" way of fighting. It was almost as if he was trying to avoid being brutal. She had an idea why he was keeping to a "calm" fighting method but she had no idea how to bring it up with him.

How could she ask an Arc if the reason was because he was trying to distance himself from his family name?

Of course, she knew who he was. There probably wasn't a person in Mistral who didn't know about the Arc family. In a kingdom of shifting alliances and turbulent politics, the Arc family was the bedrock that it all sat upon and why it all worked instead of falling into ruin. Other kingdoms who had politics even slightly similar to Mistral's quagmire of loyalties had always fractured into infighting while the pieces were gobbled up by gloating Grimm. Pyrrha knew this because she had learned about these kingdoms at school, to laugh at them.

Mistral was not a very nice place, to say the least, but it had something all those failed kingdoms did not.

Mistral had a constant leader in the form of the Arc family, a family that had been rumored to actually trace their lineage back to the time before the first men found Dust. The rest of the world was understandably skeptical of this, the Schnee family being the only family with a comparable history to them. Of course, Citizens who had actually gone to the Museum of Arc Lineage were inclined to disagree with the rest of the world. The amount of history that the three-story museum had found was enough to show that the Arcs had ruled for a _long_ time and what happened when they didn't.

Pyrrha felt her smile grow reminiscent as she remembered her Great-uncle Erebus Nikos XI actually campaigning for its opening when she was just ten years old. She had been one of the first in line the day it had opened, eager to see all the new things that her Great-uncle had found. She had grown up hearing epic stories of ancient heroes and champions of Arc and Nikos, fighting side by side against hordes of Grimm, protecting the people of Mistral. When she was young, she had idolized those heroes and considering the ancient link that the Nikos families had to the Arcs, The museum had actually been that, a museum with actual artifacts and exhibits which was a far cry from the fan shrines that littered so many unofficial "museums" and it made her all the more excited.  
Thankfully her uncle's museum was the only one remaining in Mistral, Chrysta Arc had taken an especially hostile stance towards the other museums when she heard of the lengths they went to get "artifacts" of the current Arc family. That trip to her great-uncle's museum had only intensified her passion for those stories, and like the ancient soldiers who had eventually banded together to create the Nikos families in the first place, she had trained herself to enter the Mistral Tournament. After a grueling lesson in the realities of what the tournament had become, she realized that she actually needed to become a huntress to follow her dream.

That lead her to Beacon, JNPR and Jaune Arc.

At first, she had no idea who Jaune was. All she had seen was a blonde haired boy who wasn't as smooth as he thought he was. That was when things had gotten interesting.  
Pyrrha had gotten used to the isolation that being famous for winning the heavily rigged tournament had given her. When Weiss Schnee, heiress of the largest Dust company in the world, had said one sentence to her, her hope of making friends normally had plummeted deep into her stomach.  
" _So, Pyrrha, have you given any thought to whose team you'd like to be on? I'm sure everyone must be eager to unite with such a strong, well-known individual such as yourself!"_  
When someone as proud as a Schnee was doing their equivalent of brown-nosing, there was no way that Past-Pyrrha could have known that she was wrong in the assumption that she wouldn't be getting proper friends.

And then _he_ had walked up to them. To Past-Pyrrha, she had only seen another Blonde-haired fan to come and further wall her into her future of loneliness. Her expectations were completely shattered when he started ignoring her and proceeded to flirt at Weiss with the cheesiest attempt she had ever seen.  
Having been the target of similar attentions before, she tried to interject to save her from any annoyance only to have Jaune try to do the same with her. She had experianced people flirting with her before but never as confidently. Never as nonchalantly.  
She had no idea to react and it was kind of awkward for her.

A surprisingly good kind of awkward.

Weiss had asked him if he had an idea of who she was and the answer had made her heart soar with hope.  
" _Not in the slightest, snow angel."_  
It turned out that he did know her. Not for any of her achievements at her old academy, in the tournament or even from the numerous interviews she had.  
No. He remembered her from a throwaway endorsement of an unhealthy cereal brand that she had done half-heartedly. To say that she was determined to become friends with the only boy who didn't seem to know who she was. Not to mention that she found his confidence... enduring.

As she got to know him, she had become very glad they had met. He was nice, compassionate and caring to his teammates, a hard worker and an excellent strategist considering his inexperience at combat at all. The fact that she had become friends with him and the rest of the team and through them, team RWBY, made her happy when she had time to think about it. Except for her family, her fame had kept her essentially alone for years and simply having friends like her team made her feel all warm and comfortable inside.

Especially when Jaune was around.

She wasn't blind to her increases in heart rate or the blood rushing to her face occasionally when she talked or even looked at Jaune for too long or the odd warmth that she felt when he touched her. She had been especially sensitive to such things since she had dueled a pyromaniac with a blood-boiling semblance. She didn't know if she had feelings for him, it was hard to tell of it was just because he was a friend and she wasn't used to having them. To further complicate things, she had realized that he was essentially the crown prince of Mistral, the week after he noticed what her body was doing.

So not only did she have a possible crush on her partner, she had a possible crush on a member of one of the most terrifying families in Remnant. In that case, she felt justified in her reluctance to find out whether her feelings were real or not...

Her thoughts were brought back to the present with the sound of the door opening and closing.  
Looking towards the doorway, she saw the current object of her thoughts leaning against the door with an expression that held dejection. She could have asked what happened but the damp blond hair pretty much screamed Weiss' reaction to Jaune's latest attempt at flirting. Even if Jaune might be just a friend, she felt bad every time Jaune went out there and got his heart broken. For some reason, she even felt anger at Weiss. Partly because of how sad Jaune seemed to be after being rejected once again and partly because it wasn't her.  
She didn't know why she felt that.

"Hello, Jaune!" Pyrrha greeted him, keeping her voice light as though she didn't notice anything wrong. Jaune looked up at her, green eyes taking note of the books that littered the table infront of her.  
"Hey, Pyrrha." Jaune stood up from his posisition against the door. "So, um. How's the homework going?"  
"Nothing much, just some trouble here and there."  
Of course, Jaune had already learned what that sentance really meant was " _I'm stuck on Algebra again. Please help."_  
Pyrrha realised that she wasn't really good at asking for help.

Jaune took a short glance at the desk again and straightened himself, replacing the dejected look on his face with one of determination. Helping someone else always cheered Jaune up from his moods. Sometimes Pyrrha would even pretend to have trouble with some of her work so Jaune could help her. She just really enjoyed seeing him have an air of confidence and happiness around him whenever he was sure about what he was doing.  
His sarcasm was also pretty good when he was in the mood for it.

"Don't worry Pyr, I'll be able to help you guys with the Algebra after I'm done packing."  
"Where are you going?" Pyrrha was curious, she hadn't heard anything about any field trips tomorrow.  
"Oh! Are we going on a trip?" Nora interjected herself into the discussion having bounded from her sleeping position on the bed.

"A weird looking faunus told me that there was some sort of artifact that I was needed to retrieve on a quest or something."  
Pyrrha could literally see the stars in Nora's eyes twinkle the moment that Jaune said the word quest.  
"Surely, you could simply tell the teachers about it? It seems awefully dangerous for a first year Beacon student to be needed for." Ren asked, not even looking up from his history textbook.  
"No, not really," Jaune shrugged. "This is actually pretty common in my family. There is always some crazy relic or lost treasure that needs an Arc to open it, or bad things happen."  
Ren nodded, remaining silent. Pyrrha had heard of the completely ludicrous amount of quests that the Arcs took to reclaim old Mistral artifacts. More often than not the presence of an Arc was needed to bypass hundreds of incredibly deadly traps.

If you needed evidence that the Arcs were related to the Ancient Evil Overlords then what was in those tombs were almost all the proof you needed.  
Like Mimics.

"Define, Bad things." Ren looked up and gave Jaune a skeptical look as he asked.  
Jaune rubbed the back of his head.  
"Bad things like... The artifact is in a chest that is actually a Grimm who eats anyone who opens it from the wrong bloodline."  
 _Yup, Mimics_... Pyrrha once had a distant cousin who was eaten by a Mimic.

"Ooooh! It sounds fun! Can we come with, Jaune? Please?" Nora piped up, almost bouncing in place.  
Jaune looked at the Hammer maiden with an expression that showed that he knew what his answer was eventually going to be despite how much he didn't want to.  
He sighed.  
"It's going to be dangerous. Like, you can get horribly murdered by cutlery dangerous. Would you be up for that kind of danger."  
"Thank you!" Nora yelled, leaping onto Ren as she started sharing her wild imaginigs about what is going to happen with the quest.  
Smiling at the scene, Jaune turened towards Pyrrha.

"So Pyrrha, Want to go on an adventure this weekend."  
Pyrrha gave him a smile. Going on an ancient treasure quest with Jaune?  
"I'd love to."

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Hope you enjoyed this fruit of my slow writing.

Comments and Criticisms welcome.  
Pyrrha was hard to write and I like to imagine that she is a lot more free in her opinions in her head.


	4. 3: Of Bullheads and Sires

*Notices current crop of reviews for previous chapter

This number is insufficient! The RNG Gods are displeased...

Just joking. Here is a chapter.

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 _"Who are you? It is a valid question is it not? The obvious answer would be "Of course I know who I am! I'm me after all!"  
That would be where you were wrong. The people in Vale might be satisfied with such a wishy-washy answer, the accepting fools that they are. The people in Mantle would decry you as indecisive and unwilling to give yourself to their cult of a kingdom. The wanderers of Vacuo would ignore you because they would not care about your identity, only what you could provide them.  
We are from Mistral! We are not the individualist hippies of Vale. We are not the Duty-filled puppets of Mantle and we are not the disorganized rabble of Vacuo!  
We value honor! We value Progress! We value family! We value Ambition!  
In Mistral, You can achieve anything if you are willing to work for it!_

These dull nitwits are here to try to take everything from us. Everything that makes us Mistrali! We are here today to show them the value of the question we ask besides Who are you!  
Who are you and what do you want?!

I Personally want a cat..."

-Excerpt of Julius Arc's speech at the Battle of Colour. The speech got 6/10 from most soldiers, citing its two-hour length as its main flaw.

 _"His literary masterpiece could have come together in just an extra five minutes."_  
-Mistral soldier at the speech.

 _"Sorry, I lost interest when he started shouting about cats."_  
-Misplaced Mantle soldier at the same speech.

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At Beacon, Saturday was universally known as a day of rest. It was a day that the students did what students did after a week of fighting and studying. Some, like a white haired heiress, had decided to finish up any work from the week in order to have a relaxed Sunday. Others like a black-haired reaper, enjoyed their day outside in the sun and as far away from books as possible. Some students took refuge in the Beacon library while others prepared for a night out to the city of Vale. Even the teachers themselves had slowed down, enjoying the lack of lessons to teach and new work to mark.

JNPR, however, was not doing anything like their peers this Saturday. While the students of Beacon relaxed and rested, the four members of JNPR were sitting in an airborne Bullhead with a particularly ecstatic professor.

"Why, This was a most splendid idea Jaune!" Professor Port almost yelled jubilantly, practically vibrating in his Bullhead seat. "It isn't often that students ask their professors to go on a Grimm hunt in their time off! I have to simply commend your sense of adventure!"

"Yeah. Adventure..." Jaune sullenly said, hunched over in his own seat and trying to not expel what was left of his breakfast all over the professor across from him. The Bullhead was large enough for JNPR to all sit comfortably on one side of the aircraft while Professor Port sat on the other. For a trip to Forever Fall, it was perfect for carrying both the impromptu hunting party and the oversized cages the eccentic professor had brought with him. Of course, for Jaune, there was only one problem.  
He was on an **AIR** craft. Specifically in the **SKY** in an **AIR** craft.  
To say that his motion sickness was acting up again was an understatement. So with all his effort, he tried to keep his light breakfast inside him during the, hopefully, short air trip into Forever Fall. Throwing up on a Professor and your team was not a suitable thing for an Arc to do unless it was on purpose after all.

"Frankly, I'm surprised that it was your team who decided to hunt some of the most dangerous creatures in the world. In your free time no less! I had expected either Ms Rose or Ms Adel to ask again before you did Mr Arc."  
Jaune grunted as his stomach did another flip in response to the slight shift the Bullhead made and it seemed that Port took that as a sign to continue rather than the inner turmoil that worried both Ren and Pyrrha who sat on either side of him.  
Nora, on the other side of Ren, remained oblivious to her leader's distress and was focused on every word the Professor was saying. Either that or the miniature beowolf in the cage above the Professor's head but Jaune wasn't really in the right gastrointestinal state to find out.

"To be honest, I hadn't even imagined that anyone in your team, besides Ms Valkyrie, of course, would have actually volunteered to come along. Both Ms Nikos and Mr Ren are more reserved and well, you haven't really shown the... Interest in such things." Port coughed awkwardly.

Jaune just hummed in agreement, he understood what the Professor was trying to say without saying it. That was literally the first thing you learned how to do in the Mistrali court and he knew that he wasn't exactly good at _any_ fighting. Having no interest to train with his sisters at a young age, he only had basic training that normally only prepared him so that he could defend himself until the vastly better trained Arc Warriors could help him.  
Thus his technique was perfect for staying alive, not actually winning one versus one fights and it showed in Combat classes. Pyrrha's training with him helped but they only started on Monday, definitely not long enough to feel confident in going out and challenging Mankind's greatest foe to a fight.

"Practice makes perfect, Right professor? I thought it would probably be a good idea to get our team some early experience hunting them." Jaune said, trying hard to be convincing despite the nausea he was currently feeling.  
"Aha! What a splendid idea for a first-year team! Why, I remember in my first year..."  
It was right then that Jaune tuned the professor's speech out, his battle with airsickness immensely more interesting to the young Arc. He didn't like misleading the professor to what JNPR were actually doing, but in the end, it was easier to convince Professor Port that JNPR's expedition was a simple Grimm hunt than a complicated dive into an enchanted tomb filled with Grimm or something like that.  
Jaune guessed it would be a type of hunt, because of the rare Grimm inside those tombs that often fight would-be adventurers who try to get at the Arc relic inside.  
The only two professors Jaune could imagine being interested in that would be Professor Ooblek and Ozpin...  
And both would rather go with team RWBY...

Jaune wasn't dumb. If it came to who the Professors would want to delve into an ancient Arc tomb, they would choose RWBY over JNPR every time. RWBY were one of the toughest teams in terms of combat strength in the first year. While not the best at strategy or tactical knowledge, their combat ability was a sight better than most teams on the first year and they probably could take more dangerous missions than others in their year. That coupled with the fact that no one outside of Mistral even believed in the Arc Blood Seals on most tombs, meant that a mission like that would likely be RWBY's last.

No, he wasn't hurting anyone by lying this time. Hunters with decades of experience had died to just the first set of rooms when they didn't have an Arc with them and no one was going to believe him that he needed to be there.  
This was saving people's lives.

"Well. It seems that our stop has arrived." Port suddenly said, his serious tone ripping Jaune from his internal musings.  
If you had asked the occupants of the bullhead, it would have looked like Jaune had transitioned from inside the Bullhead to outside, bent over an unlucky bush in a mere second.

A few seconds later, with his bowels sufficently voided, he stood up straight to see Port hauling the beowolf cage on his shoulder and dragging the excessively large cage out of the bullhead with his bare hand, leaving the whole of JNPR dumbstruck. Maybe there was something to his stories after all?  
The moment was broken when Port yelled to them.  
"Alright. Goodluck JNPR! I will be nearby but this is your own hunt, with your own Prey! Don't be afraid to call for help if you need it. Jolly Cooperation is one of the central tenants of being a huntsman after all!"

The last JNPR saw of Professor Port before he disappeared behind the trees of Forever Fall was a view of his back with a mini beowolf and giant cage in tow.

It was a few seconds of processing the scene before Jaune turned to his team.  
"Alright, shall we go get that relic before Port realizes we don't have any hunting equipment?"  
With an enthusiastic yell from Nora and a pair of smiling nods, JNPR moved deeper into Forever Fall.

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It took less than ten minutes for JNPR to get to the place where Gnarl had arranged to meet Jaune and only a minute more for the gnarled goblinoid to arrive. When he did, Jaune noticed that Gnarl was standing noticeably straighter and was walking more confidently than when he had seen him on Monday. Gnarl was still hunched over and moving at a slow walk but it was noticeably faster.  
 _Good. It looks like he did manage to get better from his fall. I would have felt terrible if I had hurt someone so old._ Jaune thought to himself.  
"Hello, Gnarl!" he called out.

"Greetings, Master!" Gnarl greeted as he got close enough. "Ohhh. It seems you have managed to gather some followers Sire. A most excellent move."  
"Master?" Ren asked, turning to Jaune with a perplexed look.  
"Sire?" Nora asked with an equally perplexed look.  
Pyrrha said nothing as she just stared at the diminutive creature, a look of confused interest on her face.  
"Look, guys. I'll explain just now," Jaune said in a tone that hoped that Ren and Nora weren't going to make a big deal out of it. "It's a long story."  
"Yes," Gnarl said, a talon rubbing his chin. "The history of the Arc family is a rather long story. The last I checked it had about thirty volumes of scrolls filled with bravery, cruelty, action and my personal favorite, familial distaste of friendly woodland creatures from questionable magical forests. I am hopelessly out of date with the current volumes, however. Oh, how I do hope that they kept up the standards of writing in the later volumes..."

"It got significantly more detailed" Pyrrha all but whispered, surprising Jaune. She had actually read about his family? "The Arc family had a sudden increase of members one generation and that spawned a spinoff series on its own."  
"Oh, That is good news! I always enjoyed reading the interpretation of the writers after experiencing those Evil deeds for myself. Reading it straight from a single biased perspective is going to be delightfully misleading." With that, Gnarl turned around and began walking away. "However, it is unfortunate that we are running out of time. Come along sire! Your destiny awaits!"

"Don't read Volume fifty-seven! Ozymandias wasn't exactly the most Interesting Arc to record!" Jaune shouted after the retreating Gnarl.

As Gnarl walked deeper into the forest, Jaune turned to face the extremely skeptical looks from half of his team.  
"He isn't a faunus, Jaune..."  
"It's a _really_ long story guys..."  
Ren took a step towards him, staring into Jaune's eyes with an intense look on his face. He stared back, he really going to tell them...  
It was just really hard without his premade flow charts...  
"Okay," Ren simply said, returning to his relaxed posture. "Let's go."  
With that, Ren left after Gnarl, Nora in tow, leaving Jaune and Pyrrha standing across from each other.

Even though he had only known her for about two months, Jaune could tell she was really uncomfortable.

"So... You know who I am?" Jaune asked, oblivious to how Pyrrha's eyes widened at him speaking so suddenly.  
"Well, Yes... I didn't realize at first, but I figured it out..." Pyrrha answered, rubbing her neck out of nervousness.  
Jaune sighed.  
"I guessed you would. You are from Mistral after all..."

It was only a second of silence but it was long enough to feel like a year of it.  
 _Are things going to change now that Jaune knows that I know about him?_  
Pyrrha really hoped that wasn't going to happen.  
She had a hundred apologies to make, all the way from keeping her knowledge a secret to not treating him like the Inheritor that he was.  
She felt her mouth open but the hundreds of words that she wanted to say, apologies for keeping a secret even after she had asked him to be honest with her, didn't leave her mouth.

"I'm sorry." were the words that Jaune used to smash her train of thought like a rampaging rock giant.  
"What?" her mind elegantly supplied.  
Looking at Jaune, she was completely surprised to see sadness clear on his face.  
"I looked you up after the first day," Jaune said, her heart sinking at the words. "You won the Mistral tournament _, Legally!_ I'm an Arc, I'm supposed to take notice of achievements like that. Instead, I had no idea who you were and you had no idea who I was, which I loved. I felt as if I went and explained who I actually was after not even knowing that you did such an amazing thing would have made you sad. The Nikos family is amazingly close to the Arcs back in Mistral, and I didn't even know about one girl who pretty much broke the record books. For that, I'm sorry.

Pyrrha couldn't believe it. He was sad because he didn't put her on a pedestal like everyone else? That he didn't think she was too good to be friends with?  
"You don't need to be sorry about that, Jaune, it isn't-"  
"No, Pyrrha. I did it because I was selfish too. People tend to act differently around Arcs. It's okay but when I got here, I really enjoyed being... Just Jaune. Not Jaune Arc, son of the rulers of Mistral. I enjoyed how real talking to Ruby was. I enjoyed the fact that no one took constant glances at me and I even enjoyed how casually Weiss rejects my "advances", even through the disappointment. If she knew who I actually was, I really don't believe that she would have said no."

Pyrrha remained silent, her head spinning. Jaune had the same problem that she did. People would have got close to him to simply be close to an Arc. While people unconsciously pushed her away as they saw her as unattainable, he would have to deal with people trying to get to know him because he was an Arc and not Jaune. Even people who like him for him would have a veneer of deception to them as the tried to constantly remain on his good side.  
At Beacon, he didn't have to worry about that. He could be Jaune and people would react to who he was instead of  
"The only people who were honest with me growing up was my family and one or two friends. Coming to Beacon gave me an opportunity to have that with everyone I met and I didn't want to give up that chance with you..."

 _You weren't worried about putting me up on a pedestal. You were worried that I would have done that to you._  
Pyrrha couldn't say that she wouldn't have either. If she had known that he was an _Arc_ at their first meeting, she wouldn't have seen the awkward, competent boy that he was.  
She felt a smile form on her face. Was it any more perfect that they both were worrying about the same thing? Except he had shown her that he wouldn't do that, it wasn't in him to.  
He had no idea what she would have done.

"I had the same problem," she surprised herself by speaking. "I've been blessed with incredible talents and opportunities; I'm constantly surrounded by love and praise; but when you're placed on a pedestal like that for so long, you become separated from the people that put you there in the first place. Everyone assumes I'm too good for them - that I'm on a level that they simply can't attain. You not knowing who I was... It was amazing. When Weiss had cornered me, I had believed such things were going to be everyday at Beacon but meeting you, a Mistrali, an Arc who didn't know who I was changed that.

So I guess what I'm saying is, I won't put you on a pedestal if you won't."  
She held out her hand for a handshake. It was only a moment until he took it, relief clear on his face. She didn't ignore the warmth she felt from his hand.  
"Thank you, Pyrrha. Don't worry, you are too awesome for me not to talk to like the likable person you are."

She didn't react to the color that she knew was forming on her cheeks from the sheer sincerity as they went after the rest of their team and Gnarl.  
A part of her complained that it wasn't where she wanted to be, but it was definitely on the way.  
They both didn't notice how they held each other's hand for just a second too long.

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AN: You lucky people. I had too much inspiration for this and decided to make another chapter.

I do ask you guys to tell me your thoughts about these chapters becasuse in all honesty, I read them as I write to stay motivated.

It might sound needy but Its more to keep me focuses on writing than playing overWatch.


	5. 4: The Dangers of Messing with Evil

**_Gotta admit. Quite a bit of violence in this one, including descriptions of people dying (possibly messily)._**

 ** _You all good and Warned? Good, lets get the evil on the road._**

 _"Do you understand? Your stupid assassination attempt almost worked and almost deprived my darling daughter of a father. How can I ever be the first Overlord to retire if I have goody two-shoed idiots like you running around? Oh well… I guess she could use a lesson on the correct etiquette of feeding assassins to the Beowolves…"_ \- Asmodeus, The First Overlord to Retire.

Joseph Arc glared at the warehouse down below. From his vantage point at the door of his Dominator-pattern troop transport, he could see that it was dark, decaying, dirty and crawling with White Fang. Joseph could even see the faunus night sentries standing on the roof of the building, their white uniform forcing them to stand out from the roof in the night and ruining both the aesthetics of the building and their ability to keep hidden. He snarled. It was almost insulting that this was where the despicable terrorists were keeping his precious little Sunshine.

Joseph didn't really understand why the idiotic organisation had gone violent in the first place. Surely acting like the animals that their… "critics" accused them of being would only bring misfortune upon them.  
Like, say… The Arc Armed Forces.  
Hundreds of which were currently embarked in hundreds of Dominator-pattern transports.  
Which were currently all hovering over the White warehouse.

"You'd think they would have spotted us by now…" Joseph heard his friend and bodyguard comment next to him.  
"I've always said that the White Fang was mentally deficient," Joseph spoke, gazing upon a bored White Fang sentry yawning, utterly oblivious to the doom hovering over him. "At least their last leader knew to keep out of Mistrali politics."

"Belladonna, sir?" Crassius asked as he checked his weapon. Joseph took the time to check his friend's armour, noting all the scuffs and slight discolourations that even the most intensive repairs could remove from the white and gold combat armour. One thing that had constantly bothered Joseph was that Crassius never wore a helmet, letting his black hair, horn and deceptively young face be seen by all.  
"Yes," Joseph answered as Crassius checked his dust rifle. "I believe we had come to an excellent understanding."  
Crassius huffed.  
"If you mean throwing him off the third floor yelling about 'lazy protestors' is an understanding." He said in a joking tone.  
"It worked didn't it?"  
"Yes, It did. Now some violent idiot is in charge, How's that for your negotiation technique?"  
"It would work if that Kahn person came to my third-floor window," Joseph muttered as he turned back to look at the White Fang.

Crassius, satisfied that his rifle was in working order, tapped the shoulder of the soldier next to him.  
"Get ready for drop." The armoured head nodded at Crassius' order and raised his hand to his ear, likely relaying the orders to the rest of the strike force.  
Orders sent, Crassius went to stand next to his Lord and friend.

"So, Why do you think they kidnapped Melina this time?"  
Joseph shrugged.  
"I don't know. If it was anyone else, I'd say she put them up to it. She always gets herself _kidnapped_ and then make her escape. She loves trying to one-up her sisters."  
"And Jaune?" Crassius asked.  
"Oh, she wouldn't dare. She was around during the Greenfield incident. Say what you will about my boy, but he definitely has a talent at 'winging it' so to speak." Joseph answered. Crassius could only hum in agreement. The Greenfield incident was long and overly complicated but that was to be expected when seven Arc girls individually plotted to upstage the recently-named Arc heir.  
Simultaneously.  
At the same place…  
It was such a mess of an afternoon that almost everyone had come to thinking that Jaune was some sort of political mastermind. All except Joseph and himself, who had been next to Jaune the entire episode.  
No, they had seen something else that the boy had...  
Honesty but with the ability to lie. And lie _really_ well.  
The ability to sell absolute bullshit to people was important for a ruler to have, regardless if they were nominally evil or not.

"I'm guessing that Melina doesn't have any friends with ties to the White Fang that she could have influenced..?"  
Joseph shook his head, slightly shaking his short, blonde hair out of position.  
"No. Its far more likely that these brain-dead furries wanted to get some leverage over me and were simply looking for an opportunity. I think Melina just provided one on purpose. The poor fools..."  
Crassius had to hold in his chuckle at that. Mistralian faunus didn't look kindly at all on the White Fang. Admittedly, there was still a lot of prejudice around the world against faunus and the White Fang had been formed to deal with that. However, they had a habit of messing with things that they didn't understand.  
Like Mistral.

In Mistral, everyone was equal under the Overlord, or the Arcs in this case. Everyone in Mistral got where they were through effort, skill or dedication, even the Arcs themselves. The White Fang had taken one look at the nobles of Mistral and decried them as racist against faunus as they all happened to be humans, no faunus had managed to accumulate enough power to become one of them as most of them were integrated immigrants. The White Fang caused enough ruckus that they had managed to piss off the nobles, causing mass arrests, 'accidents' and culminating in Joseph throwing Ghira Belladonna out of a window.  
"So, I'm guessing we are doing this on principle then?" Crassius asked, eager to get started.  
"Yup," Joseph answered, stretching his neck out. "Melina would get out fine, probably have a blast doing it too, but I need to teach these circus rejects that this isn't some hippy haven like Vale or some gathering of shacks in Vacuo. This is Mistral… and…"  
"It has rules, sir?" One of the nearby soldiers offered.  
"No… Um… Dammit."

The inside of the aircraft was silent as Joseph thought about what he wanted to say. It had felt like minutes of hard thought before he saw a patrol of White Fang start to pass underneath his transport. Joseph turned to his friend, a large grin on his blonde-bearded face.  
"Ah, nevermind then. Crassius, you and the men can join me down below when you are ready. Let one or two of them escape. Kill the rest."  
"Oh no, not aga-" Crassius started but it was too late.

Joseph Arc had jumped out of the open door.

As Joseph fell he began concentrating his Aura around his legs, making them stronger and heavier, with far more control and power than the average Huntsman.  
Not having a semblance to train control around helped with that,

It wasn't long before Joseph reached terminal velocity and subsequently landed on one of the White Fang below him. Unfortunately for the poor grunt below him, Joseph was going at sufficient velocity to cause anyone to explode when hitting a surface. To Joseph's aura, it was a light scratch with his reinforced legs.  
The Grunt's aura was obliterated and so was the unfortunate faunus.

Standing up from the splattered remains of the White Fang grunt, much to the shock and horror planted on his former comrades' faces, Joseph stretched his arms, reinforcing them with aura and readying them for their future grisly work.  
Turning to the blood splattered terrorists, The large blond man spoke.  
"Hello, I'm Melina's father. I'm here to pick her up."  
And in a blur of motion, the night air was filled with horrified screaming.

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"So, what you are saying is that Mistral isn't controlled by democratically elected councillors?"  
"Yes, Ren."  
"And that the kingdom is actually run like a feudal society, where powerful families rule over land and the less powerful families that live on them?"  
"Yes, Ren…"  
"And that your family is the most powerful family in Mistral, and possibly Remnant, ignoring the Schnees?"  
Jaune sighed aloud as he kicked a stone on the path the group was following into a nearby bush. Despite the frustration he was feeling towards his friend, the hiss of the disturbed miniature Deathstalker that he was aiming at put a small smile on his face as the scorpion shaped Grimm skittered away.  
Maybe he hadn't gotten over the Cave as much as he thought?  
"Yes, Ren. The answer hadn't changed the other three times you had asked."  
"I know. It's just…" Ren looked down at the forest floor with what looked like contemplation. "Why haven't I heard any of this before? The Kingdoms always make it a big deal that every kingdom is ruled by a democratically elected council."

Jaune took a look at the red leaves above him as he thought about how to answer his friend. He wondered if there was time left in the walk to explain the intricacies of the propaganda machine that the councils liked using and how his grandfather had accidentally completely destroyed Mistral's in one night at a popular Tavern. Jaune smiled at the memory of the man, Grandpa Jules was an extremely honest man and had always spoken his mind. It wasn't so nice when he had told Jaune that the Easter Bunny wasn't real on his 5th birthday but otherwise he was a great Grandpa.  
Jaune's thoughts were interrupted by a muffled boom in the distance, followed by a Loud yell of joy.  
"Sounds like Nora is enjoying herself." Pyrrha wearily commented on the mayhem happening just out of sight. Jaune and Ren nodded along, Nora had literally jumped for joy when Gnarl had warned them that there would be large amounts of Grimm on the path to their destination. The way he had been staring at Jaune at the time had left him surprisingly uncomfortable but Nora had volunteered and gone ahead with Gnarl, who seemed to have an expression that his sisters had often had on their face when he failed at getting some sort of hidden signal or something.

Oh well, it probably wasn't that important and since Nora had gone ahead with Gnarl, Jaune hadn't seen a single Grimm.

"So, I do have one question." Ren finally spoke up.  
"Hmm?" Jaune answered.  
"You said that your family runs Mistral but how do they keep power? Mistral isn't a monarchy so how does your family run it if its essentially a free for all with the different families?"  
"They just do," It was Pyrrha who answered this time. "Despite not being as populous as my family, or as politically savvy as the Grestan family, it was shown that they are probably the best to stay in power."  
"Why?" Ren asked, confusion clear on his face.  
"Bad things happen when they aren't," Pyrrha said, her voice low and serious. "Many other families have tried to take power from the Arcs and even a few of them had succeeded. It was never for long though as the Arcs got… violent." She hesitated with the last word as though she was embarrassed. "The Nikos families often… Helped with that."  
"So, in essence, the Arcs maintain power through conquering Mistral repeatedly…"  
"I heard that flaying your enemies alive is a crucial part of the process… whatever that means." Jaune provided to the discussion.

Ren pinched the bridge of his nose.  
"So, if Jaune's family causes the equivalent of a civil war everytime someone ousts them, then how does Mistral function? If anything the constant infighting would have attracted Grimm enmass to the country." Ren said, his tone in a rare combination of exasperation and confusion for him.  
Jaune scratched his ear as he thought.  
"Well its not like they aren't there already… They just don't do much." Jaune spoke.

"...What?"

"Well, they aren't really aggressive there. Pesky sure, and they do kill people who wander too close to their nests but otherwise, they don't do much." Jaune stated calmly, not noticing the shocked expression on the face of Ren.  
"In fact, I remember how a Griffin stole my ball once when I was eight. Dad went absolutely ballistic and hunted it down himself." Jaune continued. "Well, him and about a hundred soldiers but it was a really old Alpha…"  
"Was it scary?" Pyrrha asked. "I remember being terrified of a Beowolf at that age."  
"No. The capital city guards were there pretty quickly. I even-"  
"Wait!" Ren shouted, his eyes uncharacteristically wide. "This happened in your Capital!? What kind of Grimm population do you have?"  
"It's actually pretty calm in cities, only a few creeps rummaging in the garbage mostly," Pyrrha spoke up, a thoughtful expression on her face. "They are normally a bigger problem for villages, with Nuckelavee stomping on crops and Nevermores stealing thatch roofs. I don't know why they are so aggressive over here though..."  
"I heard it's because of the glyph that builders carve on the walls and waystones in Mistral," Jaune answered. "The Archivist in the Mistral library told me it was supposed to "prevent the infighting of those in the dark" or something like that. He said that a village occasionally forgets to put one up or just outright refuse to. He says that they "suffer for their hubris" or "pay for their ignorance"."  
Pyrrha gave him a quizzical look.  
"The Archivist is a… poetic man," Jaune answered the unspoken question.

In the silence that followed, he wondered why Ren was so quiet. Looking towards his friend, he noticed that Ren had gone back to his normal, neutral expression but his eyes seemed to be unfocused for some reason. Was it because of the non-violent Grimm?  
 _  
Surely its not that surprising?_ Jaune asked himself. _Every kingdom has their quirks. Mistral has non-violent Grimm, Vacuo has sandworms, Atlas has fuzzy Grimm and Vale have mostly small Grimm. When I had arrived in Vale, I was surprised there weren't any Billywitches rooting around in the storm drains._

Jaune shivered at the reminder of the beetle Grim. They enjoyed stalking people through the streets of Mistral City, jumping out of alleyways when you wouldn't expect it or eating unattended furniture.

Jaune and Pyrrha stopped as an explosion threw a large piece of a tree trunk into the road, slamming into Ren's midsection.  
"Oof!" Ren exclaimed as the surprise impact knocked him over onto his back and out of his stupor.

Jaune reached down a hand to the prone Ren, a silent offer to help him back up.  
"You know, I think we should catch up with Nora. I don't really trust that Gnarl with a girl like her." Pyrrha said as Ren took Jaune's hand and was lifted to his feet.  
"Nora would be fine." Jaune waved off the concern. "She doesn't need our help."  
"I… Wasn't talking about Nora," Pyrrha said hesitantly.  
Jaune was about to ask why until he remembered the way that Gnarl had greeted Nora and Pyrrha.  
And suddenly an image of a flattened Gnarl entered Jaune's mind.

"Yes. I agree with Pyrrha. Let's go to them quickly beforeNorakillsouronlyguidetothetombandoutofthisforest."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Joseph Arc sighed as he dejectedly dropped the two halves of yet another White Fang member.  
 _It just isn't fun anymore…_ He reflected on the source of his woes.

Joseph was a simple man who had the past time of driving his enemies before him and hearing the lamentations of their women before killing them too, of course, revenge was equal opportunity after all and so were assassins. His grandfather had ingrained that lesson in him from an early age.  
So why wasn't he happy, he was literally crushing a group that wanted nothing more than to cripple society and had kidnapped his daughter? It was a win from both a personal and PR standpoint.

The reason was sadly obvious…  
They had stopped trying to fight him.

Initially, the fight had gone off well. The White Fang were panicking, trying to put him down with a hail of gunfire and substandard swords while he waded into groups of them, ripping them apart. All this happened while Mistral troops, resplendent in their White and Gold armour which showed their allegiance to the Arcs, airdropped into the melee, killing scores of the terrorists. He was even lucky that they apparently 'holding' Melina in their main base in Mistral, meaning that there were hundreds of terrorists instead of around a dozen.

It was the perfect stress reliever from a day in the office.  
It had even gotten even better when their local leaders had stepped in, trying to rally the apparent cannon fodder around them and ganging up on the Arc Lord to try and take him out of the fight,

So he then took them out of the fight, permanently.

Then the White Fang started running instead of fighting.

Honestly, it didn't change much. Joseph was much faster than they were, keeping up with them easily, and the Arc soldiers simply shot them in their retreating backsides. The White Fang were still dying by the droves but the act of killing them had become… unsatisfying to Joseph. It was no longer a, one-sided, contest of skill and will.  
It was now a chore.

Grimacing, Joseph wiped his hands off on his near immaculate armour and went searching for where they were keeping his daughter.  
After a few minutes, he came across his friend Crassius, whose shoulders were drenched in blood, with a surprisingly clean horn and was standing next to a door leading to a storage area attached to the warehouse. The warehouse was eerily silent, the Arc soldiers having chased the terrorists from their base into the street, leaving a few stragglers that Joseph had just finished cleaning up.

"What happened there Crassius?" Joseph asked the Rhino faunus. "I thought you liked shooting fools more than anything."  
"I was." Crassius answered. "I heard one of them insult my mother though."  
"What did you do?"  
"I showed him why you don't stand infront of a charging rhino." he said with a grin.  
Crassius noticed the unsubtle look that Joseph gave the near immaculate Horn.  
"A clean horn is a happy horn," Crassius answered the unspoken question.  
"Right… Have you found Melina yet?"  
"Yeah, I have. She's through here." Crassius pointed to the door next to him.  
"How do you know?"  
To answer Joseph, all he did was point at the bottom of the door.

There was blood leaking out from the bottom of it.

"Oh." Joseph mouthed.  
"Yup," Crassius stated.

Without a word, Joseph walked up to the door and opened it, nervous to see what his little sunshine had done this time.

The room inside looked like it had been repainted with blood. There was blood on the floor, walls and even a little bit on the ceiling of the room.  
There were only three things not covered in blood.  
A green painted chair in the middle of the room, surrounded by loose ropes that had turned red with the ambient blood.  
A blond, twelve-year-old girl wearing a green sundress whose face lit up when she saw Joseph entered the room.  
And a tall black skinned, mutated horse, whose rider had been fused to the top of it who had long, gangly limbs with a horned bone mask paired with red glowing eyes.

If Joseph could assign an emotion to the Grimm as it looked around the room, he would say it looked confused.

So focused on the Grimm, he failed to notice the blond cannonball that latched onto his midsection.  
"DADDY! DADDY!" said cannonball screamed. "Look what I did!"  
"Um." Joseph uttered while looking around the room, returning his daughter's hug. "I see Melina, but…"  
"How did you do it?" Crassius finished.  
Melina looked up from her view from her father's midsection.  
"Uncle Crassius!" she screamed, glee on her face. "You came too!"  
"Melina." Joseph simply said.

Melina looked up at her father's stern face. She felt confused. Why wasn't he proud of her yet? Was she in trouble?

"I found a ritual in the library." She said, her earlier enthusiasm gone.  
"Melina…" Joseph started.  
"It said that you could make Grim!" He enthusiasm redoubled. "So I just needed to test it out but it said that you needed thinking sacrifices so I knew I couldn't use chickens but my friend said that the White Fang had come back to Mistral and you said that they were our enemies but you also said that our enemies sacrificed themselves on the altar of stupidity!"

Melina paused to take a breath.

"So I thought 'I might as well make those sacrifices useful' because stupidity gets way too many sacrifices so I sent them a message saying that I would be at the park but before I went I stitched the ritual circle on the inside of my dress so I could do it even if I was tied up but the guards the gave me weren't enough despite what the book said but luckily a lot came in looking scared and wanting to kill me so I had more than enough-"  
"Melina."  
Melina looked up at her father's eyes. His tone demanded no less.

"Is that your Grimm?" Joseph gestured to the Nuckelavee in the room.  
"Yes…" Melina answered immediately.  
Joseph nodded and looked down at his daughter.  
"I'm impressed…"  
Melina's face grew a huge grin  
"...and disappointed"  
She lost that grin.

"What was the rule about necromantic rituals, young lady?" Joseph stated calmly.  
"That I'm not allowed to do it until I'm sixteen," Melina said sheepishly, trying to dig her face deeper into her father's stomach.  
"Yup. We will be having a large family discussion about this when we get home." Joseph looked at the Grimm who was creepily staring at the human display of affection.

Although, a creepy stare was the neutral face for a Nuckelavee.

"What are we going to do with the Grimm you summoned?" Joseph asked, cracking his knuckles.  
Sensing the imminent destruction of the Grimm, Melina let go of her dad and tried to shield the Nuckelavee. Being shorter than one of the Grimm's legs, it was less than successful.  
"No, please! I want it to be my pet! Pleaaaaaase!" Melina begged. " I can take care of it!"  
Joseph looked away from his daughter in time to avoid the puppy dog eyes, taking not of the sheer amount of discarded Grimm masks there were on the floor. They had been used too many times on him to work, that was why he was totally avoiding them…

It wasn't going to work this time…

Sneaking a peek, he saw that she was still going but he wasn't going to give in… No way…

"Fine," Joseph said at last, much to the joy of Melina who had reattached herself to him, muttering hurried thank yous. "But you'll have to play with it every day, not to mention cleaning it.  
"Yes, I will!"  
"On its bone spikes too. They collect all sorts of dirt."  
"Yes!"

Joseph sighed. He knew that she would eventually start tricking her sisters into cleaning it for her. That was another problem for future Joseph though. Picking up his daughter to sit on his shoulders, getting a squeal of delight from her, he turned to Crassius.  
"Come on lets go home."  
Crassius nodded and left the room, likely to gather the troops to load back onto the transports.

As Joseph was about to leave, he stopped and turned to the still staring Grimm.  
"Well, come along. You're going to be living at my house for at least a while." Joseph instructed calmly.  
The Grimm hissed in indignation. There was no way it was going to be subservient to some…!  
The Grimm's mental process stopped when Joseph gave it an Arc-grade glare.  
Maybe servitude wasn't so bad after all?

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

AN: I hope you enjoyed this small look into the rest of the Arc family and a bit on the society of Evil!Mistral. There was going to be another part at the entrance to the "tomb" but I felt that it flowed better like this considering that the cliffhanger would have an... odd conclusion.  
Hope you enjoyed the Writing!


	6. 5: Gauntlet Blues

**I have to apologise to you all but I'm going to have to bump this story to a Mature rating. I was under the impression that Teen meant 16 instead of 13 and so I have endeavoured to correct this.  
Considering my plans for this story, it is probably going to be too much for what is considered appropriate for thirteen-year-olds.  
Hence, continue reading this story at your own risk...**

 _xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

 _"You Know, I've never understood why so many heroes refuse to kill the Villain at the end of the day. They foiled the entire scheme, fought the armies of minions and monsters and then won a duel to the death. Then, they simply walk away! What an absolute waste of time._

 _But… It gets worse…_

 _They are completely fine with leaving the Evil villain to die! Yes, you heard me, heroes are unwilling to kill their nemesis but are completely fine with them dying from blood loss or some sort of unfortunate circumstance! Discounting how rarely this actually happens, it shows just how morally flexible these so called heroes are! Especially the religious ones who spout something about 'cruel and unusual torment in the world beyond' or some other nonsense._

 _Either kill them or help them, don't just leave it alone. It's a waste of your time, their time, the innocent's time and a waste of… resources… that you could be making use of._

 _That's what I'm teaching my kids anyway… Either forgive your enemies or let them suffer in the Abyss,"_

-Herman Schnee, King of Mantle and suspected Necromancer

 _"Oh, He has no idea!"_

-Crixus, former Ruborian gladiator, Third Overlord and current God of the Abyss

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

There were many things that Jaune had been expecting to find at his destination. Growing up, he had heard countless tales of tombs that his mother had explored or the relics that his older sisters had occasionally claimed from those tombs.

He had expected huge monoliths reaching into the sky, ominous doors as black as night, holes in the ground filled with the glowing red-eyes of the Grimm.

To say that he was disappointed that Gnarl's destination was a large circular stone surrounded by a ring of stones was an understatement.

"This… is it?" Jaune asked the small, old creature, disbelief coloring his tone.

Based from their reactions, the rest of JNPR agreed with him.

"I was expecting something… bigger." Ren commented from the left of Jaune.

"It's… nicely engraved isn't it?" Pyrrha asked from Jaune's right, searching desperately to compliment the ordered collection of stones instead of saying what she was really thinking.

"Oh! What's this one mean?" Nora asked enthusiastically from position on the floor, staring eagerly at one of the carvings on the stones she was lying next to.

 _Okay, everyone but Nora_. Jaune amended mentally.

Gnarl meanwhile seemed to be looking at Jaune as though he was an idiot.

"My lord…" Gnarl slowly spoke. "Are you unaware what this is?"

A blank stare was his response.

Gnarl's eyes slowly closed as he raised a withered claw to rub the top of his head, a grumbling sigh coming from his throat. Having seen his sisters react similarly whenever some political thing flew over his head, Jaune simply waited for the small… Walnut faunus?... to explain exactly what was happening.

While waiting for the inevitable explanation, Jaune eyed the dense foliage around the small clearing surrounding the small group of adventurers. JNPR stood in a completely circular clearing with the odd collection of stones in the middle and surrounded by extremely dense foliage. In fact, it looked like the trees were equally distant from the stone circle, creating a perfect circle of grass around the stones. This even applied to the tree's branches, where any branch growing in the direction of the stones took a sharp turn It looked almost as though the trees were afraid to grow too close to the stones themselves.

 _Huh. Weird…_ Jaune thought to himself as he stared at a tree with a trunk that bent at a ninety degree angle.

 _Well. If this is some sort of entrance, the trees definitely show it has something to do with my family._

Jaune heard that the odd whining noises that Gnarl had been making while rubbing his head had been decreasing in volume and shifted his attention to the small creature.

Mental Breakdown done, Gnarl looked at Jaune with a smile that Jaune had learned that the person was in pain deep inside.

It was exactly the same smile that Uncle Crassius had seen what his sister, Olivia, had done trying to decorate his rifle.

"Sire," Gnarl said in a manner that only one suffering internally could have accomplished. "I… Understand if you might not be aware of what this is…"

"Oh no… Its a teleport stone." Jaune answered Gnarl before the diminutive creature could finish, drawing confused looks from all present. "I just don't know why you brought us to a broken one."

"Oh…" Gnarl looked like he wanted to have another breakdown. "I assure you Master, It isn't broken but rather… unpowered."

"Unpowered is still broken." Jaune stated, ignoring the looks from his friends. He could explain to them later… Maybe.

Going into the particulars of a teleport stone would take the better part of an hour, more if he did it the way the Archivist had described it to him.

 _"Knowledge is not for the weak" indeed._ Jaune thought to himself. _It was one of the hardest struggles to stay awake that I had ever fought._

"Well, Master. I seem to have the answer to that particular problem." Gnarl said as he reached for something inside the folds of his robe, a smile gracing his face for the first time that day..

What the small creature had dragged out of his robes sent a chill down Jaune's spine.

It was a gauntlet, but not just any gauntlet. The entire thing was made of interlocking silver metal pieces except for the singular piece that lay on top of the back of the hand and the part that would cover the wearer's lower arm. The edges of the plate seemed to wrap around the fingers of the gauntlet as though they had erupted from some sort of metal mouth. The fingers themselves were completely interlocking pieces with no space between them. Instead, they had specialised hinges that allowed one to move one's fingers with it still being completely protected, something that would need a master smith to do. The entire gauntlet was covered in sharp angles but smooth edges, giving off an elegant but brutal look.

Of course that was all detail to Jaune, whose eyes were locked on the one thing about the gauntlet that had dragged his attention.

In the center of the gauntlet, in its own elaborate socket, was a large orange gem shining with its own internal light.

"Oooh, thats pretty!" exclaimed Nora, cooing at the gem inside the gauntlet. "The gem has the same colour as my hair! I can't find any gems that look like that normally. Isn't that amazing Ren?"

"It _is_ a rare gem colour. Must have been very expensive to make, especially considering how old it seems to be." Ren stated, naive to the Gauntlet's true purpose. He was right though, it did seem to have some sort of rust in a few of the grooves.

Then again, that was to be expected of an ancient gauntlet.

"The real question is," Ren continued. "How can it help us?"

"Hey, are you okay, Jaune?" Jaune noticed Pyrrha step towards him, concern clear on her face as she reassuringly squeezed his shoulder.

Jaune looked into her expression. Surely she must know what Gnarl was holding?

But no, Jaune only saw concern for him. She had noticed his apprehension but not the source of that feeling.

She didn't know that Gnarl was holding the Overlord's Gauntlet, one of the most important heirlooms to his family. An artifact of such significance that Mistral had almost been torn apart when it had been first been lost.

 _Then again, how would she know?_ Jaune asked himself. _She probably wasn't taught about it at a young age, read bedtime stories about past Overlords or had siblings who dabbled in actual magic._

Jaune shuddered at the thought at Melinda's mother's day present four years ago. Poor bird.

"I'm fine." Jaune lied, giving a reassuring smile. "Just nerves, thats all."

"Are you suure thats it, Jaune?" She asked him, her eyebrow slightly raised and elongating the 'u' sound as she did when she didn't believe someone.

Lying failure! Abort Abort!

"Yes! I'm sure. Let's pay attention to the Gauntlet." Jaune said quickly, hoping to distract Pyrrha from asking any more questions.

Pyrrha was trustworthy with Mistral secrets but Ren and Nora did NOT need to know about the gauntlet. If he took the time to tell her, then the two other members of JNPR would hear and if they knew...

Jaune could only imagine what would happen if a teacher asked about what they found and someone like Ozpin found out about the Gauntlet.

It would be confiscated and Mistral and Vale would go to war.

Yes, it was much better to keep it secret.

"Yes Master," Gnarl's gaze was directly on Jaune's face. "In order to progress further, I'm afraid you will have to put on the gauntlet. It has the energy to take us where we need to go."

Jaune didn't want to. He really didn't want to. Somewhere down in his soul it felt as though putting that gauntlet on his arm was going to mean an end to his life as a Hunter. It was said that if an Arc could wield the gauntlet then the family destiny would be his destiny.

That meant no life of being a Hunter

That meant not being a hero and saving people.

That meant embracing what his family was to the rest of the world. He had come to Beacon to learn how to protect people, all people and not just those who lived in Mistral.

Before, Jaune knew it, his hand had already made its way half-way to the gauntlet. There was another part of him that wanted to pick up the gauntlet. It was a powerful heirloom after all and, despite its corruptive powers, it could be used to help him become a better Hunter. Being an Arc, he didn't need to worry about being corrupted by the Gauntlet, his family's resistance to artifact influence being a well documented trait, so the risk to him would be minimal.

 _It couldn't hurt, right?_ Jaune reasoned internally. _The Gauntlet wouldn't hurt me and it was a lot better in the hands of an Arc…_

It was a compelling mental argument but he still didn't feel right about this…

He had time to decide, right?

"Why him?" Jaune's head turned to look at Nora who had spoken, a surprisingly ugly expression on her face. "Why does he get the nice looking stone?"

"Nora-" Ren started to say before Nora interrupted him.

"No Ren, He gets everything. He gets a mansion, a family that loves him. A Family that is alive, Ren!" Nora practically shouted at her best friend. Jaune could see that it struck a nerve with the boy, his face practically going slack from his normally schooled expression. "Its a time that we got something for a change."

"Nora!" Pyrrha yelled as she rushed between the two. "What has gotten into you? This isn't like you at all."

Pyrrha was right, Nora never acted so… angrily before. Looking at her face, Jaune could see none of the happy attitude that she had before, only scorn and anger.

"You're one to talk, Ms 'High and Mighty'!" Nora shot back, venom in her tone.

 _Wait._ Jaune thought to himself as Pyrrha got dragged into an argument with the uncharacteristically angry girl. _Where did this come from? What made her so angry? Nothing has happened but…_

A part of Jaune wanted to get involved in the argument. To stop his teammates from wrecking their friendship that was only just beginning…

But a much larger part of him made him turn his head away from the escalating argument between his friends and towards what had started the argument in the first place.

Jaune's gaze slowly moved to what was in Gnarl's wizened claws. Sunlight reflected off the metal plates shaped into clawed fingers, and the orange jewel seemed to glow with its own light, unaffected by the afternoon sun.

 _Could it have affected Nora this quickly?_ Jaune thought to himself. _Sure, Big Sis Bianca had said that once an Evil artifact had caused her best friend, her boyfriend and her token thief companion to betray her for it... simultaneously… But was the Gauntlet this powerful?_

Jaune took another look over the Gauntlet in Gnarl's claws, ignoring one passive aggressive remark from Pyrrha towards the raging Nora.

That _never_ happened.

He needed to end this quickly before his friends did something that they would regret.

 _What did the Gauntlet want?_ Jaune asked himself. _What does Nora want to do?_

 _She wants the Gauntlet… Does that mean..?_

Jaune took a deep breath and exhaled. If the Gauntlet wanted a wearer, he was going to give it one.

For his friends' sakes at least.

Jaune, steeling his mind for what needed to be done, walked up to Gnarl, taking off his own clove and gauntlet as he did so, and took the gauntlet from his scaly hands, Gnarl's small grin evolving into a malevolent smirk as he did so. The second that he had a good grip on the Gauntlet it somehow unfolded itself, creating an opening where Jaune could fit his hand inside.

With one last breath of hesitation, Jaune put his hand into the Gauntlet and felt it shift to snugly encompass his hand and lower arm.

 _Well, that wasn't so bad…_

Then, what felt to be thousands of tiny blades pierced the aura of his gauntlet and he fell to the ground, screaming in pain.

"Do not worry, My Lord." Jaune could dimly hear Gnarl's satisfied tone over sheer pain assaulting his senses. "The pain, while intense, is nothing of the physical sort. In fact, it is merely the Gauntlet bonding itself to your soul. Or, more accurately, grafting itself to your aura as one would do so with a replacement hand. Only, without the anesthetic and using impossibly blunted surgical tools…"

Through the pain, Jaune dimly noted that the small creature was right. He could feel the Gauntlet slowly becoming a part of him, as though it was actively digging through is aura and covering itself in it.

"Jaune!" He heard a shout from somewhere as his progressively blurring vision worsened, barely letting him see the red-haired champion who had practically teleported to his side.

"What did you, DO!?" Pyrrha practically screamed at Gnarl after noticing the gauntlet on Jaune's hand.

"Nothing, of course." Gnarl said with a smug tone to his voice, completely unfazed by the anger in Pyrrha's emerald eyes. "The Gauntlet is merely testing whether the young lord is an Arc. A quite unfortunate security feature that was implemented by one of its previous masters. A quite paranoid Ove-, Master that. He used to…"

Jaune was too busy stifling his own screams of pain to pay any attention to what was Gnarl said, but he could barely make out Pyrrha decide not to kill Gnarl.

It was only a few seconds longer that the pain stopped just as suddenly as it had appeared, drawing a huge sigh of relief from the currently prone knight.

"Jaune? Are you alright?" Jaune turned his head to face the worried face of Pyrrha.

"Umm…" Jaune eloquently answered. "Maybe?"

Jaune had no idea what response he expected from his partner but hitting him on the arm was not it.

"Oow" Jaune yelled, more out of reflex than actual pain. "What was that for?"

"You aren't supposed to touch any Magical Artifacts from Mistral." Pyrrha said, her face getting progressively annoyed with each word she said. "That lesson is taught to every child that has ever lived there. Do you remember _Goldstein and the Cursed Crown, Icarus and the Wings of Folly_ , or even _The Mimic and the Three Adventurers?"_

"Yes…" Jaune winced. That last one was particularly graphic for a children's story. It did get the point across though."

"So," Pyrrha's voice took a very serious tone. "Why did you, not only touch an Evil Artifact but decide to wear it?"

"Well… It was an Artifact from my family…"

Pyrrha gave Jaune a flat look.

"It was also making Nora fight and theonlythingIcouldthinkoftomakeitstopwastomaybejustpossiblygiveitanowner?"

Pyrrha simply sat there and stared, her face completely blank. After a few seconds, she stood up and walked a short distance away. To Jaune, her steps seemed heavier than usual. She only did that when she was sad, like after dropping her breakfast tray one morning, or when she was angry, like after Cardin had tried knocking the tray out of her hands the next morning.

 _She was probably mad…_ Jaune thought to himself sagely as he looked around for the rest of his team. On the other side of the clearing from where Pyrrha had gone, Ren and Nora were sitting where Ren was comforting the crying Nora.

"You need not worry about her My Lord." Jaune heard Gnarls voice behind him. Looking at the small creature, Jaune could have sworn that the creatures grin reached both sides of his face.

"What happened to Nora?" Jaune asked, studying the steel plates of the gauntlet that fit his hand comfortably along with the orange stone, now visibly glowing.

"As you likely surmised My Lord, the Gauntlet itself wanted a new Master and was terribly desperate for another one as well."

Gnarl Sighed.

"Terribly temperamental, these Evil armour pieces. Not like Evil swords at all..."

"So it was influencing Nora…" Jaune interrupted before Gnarl could start reminiscing again.

"Yes, and as the Gauntlet would only accept an Arc as its Master, a quite unpleasant and positively devious fate would befall her if she ever managed to put it on."

Jaune nodded, It made sense that an Arc artifact would lead people to their unwitting doom.

However, one question was burning in Jaune's mind.

"What are you, Gnarl?"

"I don't know what you mean, Lord Arc."

"Don't." Jaune warned him. "I know that this is the Overlord's Gauntlet. Along with the fact that you led us to a teleport stone, It means that you know about as much as the Overlords as my family does, probably more as none of my family even know about where the Gauntlet or the stone were."

"So," Jaune glared at the, now smiling Gnarl. "Who are you?"

"You need only have asked my Lord," Gnarl gave a grin as he bowed. "Gnarl, advisor and senior Minion, at your service."

"A minion?" Jaune asked. "I only heard stories…"

"I assure you, My lord. Most of those stories are false. Minions do not have a habit of recording stories. Or writing. Or… anything but mayhem really…"

Jaune shook his head as he stood up. First the Gauntlet attaches to his arm and now a minion was his guide.

Without saying anything, Jaune made his way to Ren and Nora. Neither of them noticed his approach but he could hear Nora, who was in the Ren's comforting embrace, whispering apologies in between sobs.

Jaune crouched so that he was at his friends' level, finally getting their attention.

Ren merely gave him a concerned look while Nora looked at him with eyes that showed her sheer sadness.

To say that it hurt Jaune to see Nora reduced to such a state was an understatement.

"Jaune…" she began, choking down her sobs. "I'm so sorry. I-I had no idea what came over me and…" She broke off, not being able to say more.

"Don't worry about it. None of it was your fault." Jaune gave Nora a warm smile, pretending to not hear Gnarl retching behind them.

"But I-"

"No buts," Jaune interrupted her before she could argue. "Its not your fault. Its this thing." Jaune raised his arm so that they could see the steel Gauntlet.

"How would a piece of metal be at fault?" Ren skeptically asked.

"Well... Its not actually a normal Gauntlet but an Evil artifact and since Pyrrha and I are used to being around Evil stuff so it tried to get the two of you to put it on."

"So. That means?" Ren asked, while Nora listened with rapt attention.

"It means that it deeply affected Nora and how she feels now is likely because of that." Jaune sighed.

"It also means I don't think you two should come into the tomb with Pyrrha and I."

"What?" Both of them asked at the same time.

"I mean… We are going to be surrounded by a lot of stuff that would do worse things than the Gauntlet. I don't want you two to get hurt."

"That doesn't matter Jaune. We can't let you two go in alone." Ren spoke up while Nora nodded furiously, not feeling well enough to voice her own dissent with the idea. "What happens if you are surrounded by Grimm or something?"

"That wouldn't happen." Jaune scoffed.

"But what if it does?" Ren pressed the issue.

"No. I mean the tombs aren't designed that way. My ancestors found it was a lot cheaper to make a lot of traps to mentally torture intruders than a lot that were designed to physically hurt them."

Ren sighed.

"Jaune…"

"No, Ren. Honestly, I don't like it either but If we find something that can fully possess you or Nora, or even both of you, we are going to get seriously injured. Also, I need someone to stay here to delay Professor Port is he comes looking for us before we finish in there. As you two will get hurt going in there, you guys need to stay here. Don't worry. We won't be gone long."

Taking their silence as reluctant acceptance, Jaune started making his way back to the teleport stone.

"...resure" muttered Nora.

"Sorry?" Jaune called back to the orange haired warrior, still taking comfort in her best friend.

"I said you need to bring back a lot of treasure." Nora said in an even tone but Jaune could hear just a hint Nora's previous bubblyness.

"For you, Nora. A vault full of gold. And one for Ren too." Jaune shouted back as he walked away again, missing the small smile on Nora's face that he knew would be there.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

When Jaune had gotten back to the teleport stone, he found Gnarl and Pyrrha talking to each other who stopped as soon as he arrived.

"Look Pyrrha," Jaune spoke before Pyrrha could. "I'm sorry for getting you guys all worried. But it was pretty important that I stopped it from messing with Nora."

"Jaune…" Pyrrha spoke slowly. "Just… Why?"

Jaune raised his hand so that his partner could clearly see the Gauntlet.

"This… Is the Gauntlet of the last Overlord."

Jaune forced himself to avoid laughing at how quickly Pyrrha's eyes went wide and how fast her jaw had dropped.

It was only a second that the expression lasted on Pyrrha's face, before it was replaced by a far more composed expression of nervousness, but Jaune made a mental note to never forget it.

"So… Its real? It's not just a story that was made up by the Arcs?" Pyrrha asked, a small quiver in her voice.

"Well, the Gauntlet itself is pretty old, I'm sure many people could have written weird things about it somewhere."

"Umm. No, Jaune that wasn't what I was asking about." Pyrrha said slowly and nervously.

"Oh, then what was-"

"No matter, I'm sure my question wasn't important. Please, lets just continue what we were about to do with this interesting arrangement of stones."

"You know, My Lord" Gnarl interjected. "I believe your friend has a point about moving on with it."

Jaune shrugged. If it was that important Jaune could always ask Pyrrha later.

"So," Jaune began. "Our first step is to activate the big teleporter stone. So… How do we do it."

After a short instruction from Gnarl, Jaune stuck his Gauntleted hand out in the appropriate sign to activate it. Jaune almost jumped back when the circle of rocks began glowing from it engraving and a large disk of blue energy formed just above the central rock.

"Ah. It seems the Teleporter disk recognised the wearer of the gauntlet and absorbed some of the Gauntlet's magic. Quickly, My Lord, Into the portal before it runs out of power." Gnarl shouted before promptly jumping in.

Not willing to be left behind, Jaune and Pyrrha gave each other a mutual nod and leapt onto the teleport stone together, vanishing as they did so.

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The next thing Jaune noticed was that he was surrounded by green.

All around him were plants, trees and grass.

In between the trees, he could see all manner of creatures making the forest their home.

It was almost as though he was in an Idyllic forest from those old fairy tales.

The one thing that broke the vision was the ruin of a tower stretching into the sky, surrounded by ludicrous amounts of foliage and still managing to appear to be the most sinister architecture Jaune had ever seen in his life.

"Welcome, My Lord" Jaune heard the voice of Gnarl somewhere nearby. "Welcome to the base of the Dark Tower!"

The next thing was the immediate need to void his stomach's contents, which happened right there as he dimly noted Pyrrha doing the same.

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AN: Gotta admit, with my recent bout of sickness I wasn't sure If I'd get any of this done this week and Ive spent so long on this one chapter I was worried that I had messed it up somehow.

Speaking of which, Im not particularly happy with this chapter but I'll send it out there so Im not perpetually stuck.

Once again, Hope you enjoyed the reading


	7. 6, A View to Die For

**MERRY CHRISTMAS!**

 _"Looking at it now, I perfectly understand the Mistralian natural aversion to enchanted forests. I mean, have you ever seen a baby deer? With its huge eyes and clumsy legs?_

 _Bloody terrifying, I tell you!_

 _The only good thing about them is the best housecats come from there!_

 _Surely you'd know! With your fluffy ears and all. Im sure your dad found lots of House cats!"_

 _-Julius Arc to the Head Chairman of the Faunus Rights Commission, right before the start of the Faunus revolution._

Pyrrha Nikos had never felt so terrible. Every part of her felt like it was trying to evacuate her body at the same time, even as her lunch did the same, and somehow everything around her made her feel worse.

Pyrrha would freely, and privately, admit that in many ways she was a romantic at heart. So the picturesque view of the forest clearing she found herself in should have had her marvelling at the beautiful flowers that rested among the lush green leaves of the trees around the retching champion. She should have smiled as the melodious birdsong graced her ears, lifting her soul just a little bit, or even marvelled at the beauty of the multi-coloured insects making their homes in the grass she was kneeling over. Even something as the perfect sunlight should have brought a small smile on her features.

However, that wasn't the case. The flowers' colours hurt her eyes as she gazed at them while the trees themselves inexplicably sent her stomach reeling. The birds sent chills down every bone in her body every time they chirped, and the sight of the beautiful insects left her skin crawling.

The area was beautiful, full of life and perfect in almost every way.

So why did it feel so… _wrong?_

Pyrrha took the chance to gaze around her for her companions, immediately regretting it as her entire being recoiled from a simple glance at a particularly beautiful rose bush.

Gnarl, the demented walnut, was standing a small distance away with a massive grimace on his face, seemingly preoccupied with cursing his surroundings as much as possible. Other than that, he seemed fine, if greatly annoyed.

Jaune was… worse. Way worse than she felt.

His skin had gone pale as literal snow as he retched out the contents of his stomach a small distance away. Pyrrha's heart leapt to her throat as she saw blood dripping from his mouth and mixed with his partially digested lunch under his kneeling form. He breathed in deeply and Pyrrha could see that his eyes had gone near blood red when his pained eyes met hers.

Seeing Jaune in such pain, with how she felt now? This wasn't natural.

Did Gnarl do this? She hadn't heard of a teleporting stone doing this in the old legends her father used to read to her but Gnarl knew about them more than she did. Did he cause this, trying to kill Jaune?

Pyrrha gritted her teeth as she raised her self to one knee, each movement on the grass causing her muscles to almost seize up if it weren't for how she **forced** them to move.

Blood having iron within it was useful sometimes.

As she half-stumbled, half-crawled over to Jaune, she put her thoughts of impaling the diminutive creature with Miló's javelin form at the back of her mind. She needed to help Jaune now, Mistral style revenge could come later.

Despite the short distance between the two teens, it still felt too slow for Pyrrha. Finally reaching her team leader, she placed her hand on his back as she spread her semblance through him, past the armour he was wearing and into the organs themselves. She dimly noticed just how much of a relief that she didn't want to recoil from her teammate and partner's touch.

She almost gasped at what she felt.

She thought that she had felt that everything inside her was trying to evacuate her body but… Jaune's…

With her semblance, she could feel Jaune's blood leaking out of holes that spanned across what seemed to be every vein and artery inside his body. Every organ was losing blood, all the way from his stomach to even his eyes. Why? What was causing all this? She had heard that to most people, Huntsman included, that Internal bleeding was a serious issue, even life threatening at the worst of times.

 _Forget life-threatening,_ She quickly admonished herself. _It felt like Jaune's aura is the only thing keeping him from falling apart._

Pyrrha stifled her initial reaction of panic. She had experience with Internal bleeding and she couldn't afford to waste time, especially if it was this bad. She shook off the small feeling of doubt that was pooling in her currently nauseous stomach. Her own injuries had never been this bad, ever, but a little experience in dealing with internal bleeding was better than nothing.

Closing her eyes in concentration, Pyrrha reached out with her semblance and tried to grab hold of the iron in Jaune's blood and slowly pushed the free-floating blood back into his body, using her hand on his back as a reference point. It wasn't much, but keeping the internal wounds clear of blood would allow Jaune's aura to close them significantly faster. Her face contorted into a frown as she saw Jaune's internal wounds closing too slowly despite her efforts as Jaune's own blood started puncturing the arteries in what seemed to be the most bizzare and gruesome escape attempt she had ever seen.

Her teeth gritted in fury as she pushed her semblance harder, putting pain that her own organs were going through to the back of her mind as she cursed the necessity of what she needed to do next. Her semblance was irritating like that, her semblance relied on the creation of magnetic waves to influence magnetic substances. However, magnetic waves were invisible to the human eye but luckily her Semblence came with a sort of magnetic ping, allowing her to feel magnetic fields and magnetic surfaces.

The problem with that was, this sense was the only way to use her semblance. Want to defeat a team by using their combat robot as a wrecking ball during a Stadium match? No problem.

Want to do that in the middle of the forest? Nope.

Pyrrha could only create magnetic fields in relation to another magnetic field. In a stadium or city where every power cable was generating a field, it was easy to direct her semblance exactly where she wanted. In a forest with only herself and other humans to guide her semblance, it was significantly harder.

What that meant for her current situation was that manipulating the blood inside someone, which would be difficult even in a powered room, was excruciating here in this… demon forest.

Unfortunately for her sensibilities, Jaune's injuries were already almost too hard to treat without being limited by not being able to accurately direct her semblance.

She needed to get a larger field closer to Jaune.

Closer than it already was…

Glad that she was in too much pain to feel embarrassed, Pyrrha crawled closer to her dying partner. With a grunt of exertion, Pyrrha slowly placed herself on Jaune's back so that her heart, the centre of the magnetic field her body naturally generated, would be just above his spine.

Jaune let out a grunt as he felt the sudden addition of Pyrrha's weight on his hunched back. He probably had no idea that Pyrrha had even moved before she was on his back thanks to the bleeding in his ears and eyes. Pyrrha waited for any response from the Royal Heir that she was currently lying on but after a few seconds of silence, it seemed that Jaune was in so much pain that he didn't even notice.

Pyrrha felt an odd sense of gratitude that Jaune had no idea of the position she was in.

Almost instantly after positioning herself, Pyrrha's awareness of the exact position of Jaune's blood sharpened to the point where she could almost feel every blood cell.

With far more precision than earlier, Pyrrha forced the cells back into the deteriorating circulatory system while also making sure that the hyperactive blood couldn't cause even more damage.

"Well, Well, What do we have here?" Pyrrha's focus broke as she heard a familiar, almost malevolent, voice approaching from behind some of the Devil bushes. "I've known a lot of mistresses in my time and, while most of them were certainly eager to please their master, I can't say that any of them were so eager as to lay with their master in the middle of dying."

As Gnarl stumbled his way out of the bush with a lecherous expression on his face, Pyrrha felt a deep and powerful urge to punt the diminutive creature back the way he came.

For the moment, intense rage only complemented the feeling.

"You!" Pyrrha hissed. "You did this!"

From the first time that she had seen Gnarl, she hadn't liked him. Despite what she had heard many in Beacon whisper, she wasn't some idiot girl from the West of Mistral which was part of Vale in all but name. She was a Shield Heiress of Mistral and she had heard the ancient tales of goblins and minions whenever her dad had gone starry-eyed every time another artefact from the Overlord era was dug up. She knew just _how_ Evil the minions had been. Even if Jaune seemed unaware of what Gnarl exactly was, and she forsomereasoncouldn'tmanagetotellhimbecausehelookedsocutewhenhewasdetermined, she made sure to always keep in mind where the diminutive creature was.

Pyrrha's initial impression of Gnarl wasn't helped by catching him looking at both her and Nora's… assets.

She had no doubt that anyone she knew, even Jaune on a bad day, could have defeated the ancient minion in a straight up fight.

But an ambush with some sort of forgotten magic, isolated from any help.

A creature like Gnarl, would be fully capable of pulling that off.

"Ooh?" Pyrrha gritted her teeth in a mixture anger and pain as Gnarl's face revealed an amused grin. "This is the first time I've been accused for almost killing someone before I had actually tried it."

Pyrrha's eyes narrowed.

"Non-existant betrayals aside, this is quite the problem…" Gnarl mused as his face morphed into a deep frown. "There wasn't supposed to be this much Light energy floating about the place. That inbred mutt must have slacked off on the desecrations!"

"Light? What are you talking about? Why is this happening?"

Gnarl slowly turned his head towards Pyrrha, his eyes locking onto her furious eyes. Silence reigned between the two for a brief moment before Gnarl let out a long suffering sigh.

"Really? You have no idea?" Gnarl tutted. "What kind of Goody twoshoes thought you didn't need to know about the most annoying, most disgusting and itchiest magic that has ever existed? Seriously, It seems the quality of a good Evil education decreases every generation. Well, besides the obvious difference in naming, Light energy-"

"Gnarl!" Pyrrha yelled at the elderly minion through gritted teeth, interrupting him. "I don't care! Help me save him!"

Gnarl's eyes casually glanced to the dying Jaune below Pyrrha, causing her to feel a pang of anger at the sheer dismissal that the Elder minion had in his eyes for her Prince and Partner.

 _You're lucky that I can't leave Jaune's side at the moment._ Pyrrha's mental voice spat at Gnarl. _I swear you will regret your Insolence for looking at His Majesty with such disdain!_

Pyrrha's mind stalled to a halt. Where had that come from? Insolence? Was that how she saw Jaune? As more of a Prince than the admittedly loveable idiot on that initiation day?

Looking down at Jaune underneath her, she realised that she was in too much pain for that level of introspection now.

For what seemed to be an eternity to Pyrrha's tortured body, there was only silence from the old minion.

"Gnarl!" Pyrrha yelled, letting a tinge of the anger building within her to colour her tone.

Gnarl let out a heavy sigh, with a very resigned look on his face.

"To save the young master there, all you need to do is pump some mag- Aura into his gauntlet. His own aura should be able to power it from there.

Like a shot, Pyrrha reached past the heaving blond's head, who heard nothing if the blood leaking from his ears were any indication, and grabbed the sinister looking gauntlet that still covered Jaune's left arm.

She could feel her muscles protesting from the activity of reaching such a short distance, her own blood inside her arms resisting the act of getting closer to the terrible grass on the floor below.

What was once a simple movement, turned into a herculan journey as she had to slowly force her arm closer to the floor. This extra time let her study the gauntlet.

What a fool did the Minion think she was? There was no way that the Gauntlet could help, even if Jaune hadn't been misled into thinking that this was the _actual_ gauntlet of the Overlord. While she had only known Jaune for a short while, and she could say many charitable things about him, it was easy to see that he wasn't the best when it came time to notice someone's true motivations.

He did believe that Weiss was playing hard to get and not trying to avoid him like a particularly nasty BillyWitch, much to constant amusement.

To be honest, it was unfair of her but Weiss still occasionally reminded Pyrrha of some of the most annoying Mistral nobles she had ever met and she took a small amount of pleasure whenever she saw her figuratively run away screaming whenever the Royal Heir of Remnant attacked her with poorly written romance poems.

With Jaune's unfortunate gullibility in mind, it was easy to see that someone as naturally devious as a Minion of legend would have no trouble in deceiving Jaune into thinking that the Gauntlet was, infact, one from legends. She felt terrible

There was no way that simple steel in the shape of a gauntlet could stop… whatever was happening.

She still reached for the gauntlet however. Regardless of her opinion on it, there was still a miniscule chance for Gnarl to be telling the honest truth, even if the legends said creatures like Minions couldn't do that at all.

A chance to save Jaune, and her, from literally ripping themselves apart was worth pursuing.

Slowly and laboriously, Pyrrha felt her finger tip touch the cool steel of the gauntlet where she immediately pushed as much of her aura into her finger as she could manage.

She expected nothing to happen, she expected to hear derisive laughter from the minion standing infront of the dying members of JNPR as Pyrrha foolishly put her faith in a literally Evil creature from legend.

She didn't expect to suddenly feel her Aura being drawn out of herself through the tip of her finger as though the Gauntlet was a dehydrated man desperately drinking water. She didn't expect the large jewel on the gauntlet to light up, almost blinding her with its orange radiance.

She didn't expect for that same light to banish the pain from her body.

Pyrrha let out a relieved sigh as all her muscles spontaneously relaxed from the sudden lack of pain throughout her body.

A small grin accompanied her sigh as she felt her partner's blood cease its unnatural, hyperactive movement, as though the orange light had somehow calmed the unthinking blood cells.

And then, things got weird…

When Pyrrha had relaxed, she had relaxed totally and her concentration on maintaining the Aura supply to her finger had gone along with the pain she had been feeling.

Apparently, it was fine because the glowing gauntlet had stopped drawing her aura all together.

Instead, it felt it was drawing from everything else instead.

Pyrrha's eyes widened as the devil grass under the Gauntlet lost its disgustingly rich shade of green as it withered and died. She could feel her mouth drop open as the effect spread, the grass around the two students of Beacon dying in what seemed to be a five-meter radius from Jaune.

The flowers nearby wilted and died.

The birdsong was replaced with silence.

The trees seemed to shy away from the literal circle of death.

At the centre of the unnatural devastation, one could be forgiven for feeling scared, anxious or even wondering where they could attain a fresh pair of pants. Pyrrha felt none of these things. Beyond all logical reason in her mind, Pyrrha was most relaxed she had felt since she had left her home in Mistral. Pyrrha yawned, the orange light somehow soothing her muscles to the point where the exertion of the day made her feel sleepy.

It didn't hurt that whatever she was lying on was oddly comfortable.

"Aah! Finally!" Gnarl shouted enthusiastically. "Its been so long since I've felt dead grass between my toes and the smell of Evil in the air! Oh, it really takes me back!"

Pyrrha didn't particularly agree with Gnarl, but she didn't have the energy to voice any disagreement, further nuzzling into her pillow as it rhythmically moved up and down.

"…Pyrrha?" Her pillow choked out as his throat finally healed.

…

…

In a second, all that had gone on for the last two minutes was brought to the front of Pyrrha's mind.

She suddenly didn't feel very tired.

With what was definitely not a squeak, she threw herself off of her recovering partner, using her semblance on the metal plates of her armour to increase her velocity.

Pyrrha watched as Jaune groggily stood up, his extremely large aura no doubt almost finished fixing his injuries, as she tried to use her semblance to stop the burning sensation in her cheeks.

Gnarl's delighted cackling wasn't helping.

"Uh, Pyrrha?" Jaune's voice was raspy as he balanced on unsteady legs. "What happened?"

Before Pyrrha could say a word, Gnarl's cackling reached a crescendo in tempo and a devious smile spread across his lips.

 _No, He wouldn't!_

"Well, my Lord. It seems that your teammate took the opportunity to enjoy your company a little more than- URK!"

Pyrrha had moved faster than she remembered moving ever before and was on her feet in the fraction of a second, punting the Elderly minion with a well-timed kick before he could say another word.

Gnarl went flying out of the dead circle and into a particularly colourful rose bush.

"AIEEEE!" Gnarl screamed as he felt the gentle caress of the numeous blunted thorns on the bush's branches and the soft texture of its leaves, the concentrated Good in the plant feeling as though there were Hot coals under his skin.

Pyrrha turned back towards her partner.

Looking at Jaune, she was surprised to see that a small grin had grown on his face while he looked on to Gnarl who was struggling to unentangle himself from the rosebush he had landed in.

"I…" Pyrrha began but the second Jaune looked at her with a quizzical expression, her voice died out.

Clearing her throat, she tried to begin again.

"I… You had massive internal bleeding and your aura wasn't doing enough to stop it." Pyrrha winced at how clinical she made Jaune's potential death sound. "So, I used my semblance to try to stop the bleeding, but… I… needed to be very close to you."

"So, you needed to lie on top of me?" It was an innocent question, free of implication or undertone.

Pyrrha nodded at her oblivious partner. In a way, Pyrrha would have preferred Jaune to pick up on the unfortunate subtext without her spelling it out for him.

At least she wouldn't have to wait to be embarrassed that way.

"There were too many internal injuries. I needed them to be closer to my heart so that I find them and stop the bleeding." Pyrrha closed her eyes, trying to ignore the excessive burning in her cheeks. "I could barely move… so I needed to climb on you to…"

Pyrrha tried to say more but she was interrupted by the feeling of a pair of strong arms wrapping around her. Her eyes shot open and received a practical eyeful of her partner hugging her.

"Wha?" Pyrrha eloquently stated.

"Thank you."

"For what?" Pyrrha asked, her mouth moving on its own as it felt that her train of thought had derailed several stations ago.

"I… I'm not going to lie, Pyrrha. I was scared I was going to die." Jaune's voice was so soft that Pyrrha could only barely hear it. "I had never felt so much pain in my life, except for the time Bianca caught me helping Melina with one of her pranks. That and all the blood and it felt as everything was going dark… I felt that I was going to die here. Then I felt you."

The burning in Pyrrha's cheeks intensified exponentially.

"Then I didn't feel so bad. There was the pain but it felt like I would survive…"

"So… Thank you for saving me, Pyr."

"It was a pleasure, Jaune." She said after a while, her voice completely calm.

 _WHAT! Why did I say it like that? What the Fuck was I thinking? He's holding me and thanking me for saving his life and I reply like "Oh. It was fun. Let's do it again soon!"_

Oblivious to her internal turmoil, Jaune disengaged himself from the hug and gave her a warm smile.

…

…

Maybe she chose the right wording after all?

At that moment, a panting Gnarl managed to crawl into the circle safe from the intensely lushious plants.

"*GASP* I'm glad that you are alright milord." Gnarl forced out between gasping breaths.

He took a look at Pyrrha that was a mix between baleful and Lecherous.

"I see you'll fit in nicely at least…"

Jaune took a step forward towards Gnarl.

"Gnarl, What exactly happened? What was that?"

Gnarl stood up, shaking himself off of the rapidly decaying leaves that had gotten caught in the folds of his cloak.

"I will inform you of everything my Lord, but, can we speak on the way, our first destination is very nearby to us."

"Fine." Jaune said after a few seconds of thought. "But you need to start talking now."

"Yes, Yes, Of course my lord."

With that, the three of them departed, the circle of death following them as the dead plants in their wake rejuvenated back into their pristine forms after the two Mistralians and the Minion moved far enough away.

"The first thing you need to understand is that Evil has an annoying tendency to want to flee from good magic, Evil blood especially…"

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 **AN:** Was going to get more stuff done in this update but considering the original plan for this small section of Plot was about a thousand words at most, I decided to cut it off her otherwise my rampant writers block could screw with this further.  
Next chapter is probably going to be a long one though as more happens in it but world building and character relationship development.

So hope you guys enjoyed your Christmas Present!


	8. 7, A Lion Sighs and a Prince Strolls

**_AN: After many days of studying for my last chance at an exam, I finally have my physics degree..._**

 ** _Only to immediately fall into the trap that is my Honours lectures._**

 ** _Sigh_**

 ** _I couldn't get this idea out of my head so..._**

 ** _Hope you enjoy the writing!_**

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 _"Pray for my soul? Pshaww. I don't need religion. What does it offer? Rewards? Eternal life after death? I can get both those things right here. I can reward myself from all the loot my minions are taking from your vaults beneath the church altar. As for the eternal life bit? I'm currently working it and its going to be so much better than being some stupid Lich like that Schnee idiot likes to brag about._

 _You might want to pray for your soul though…_

 _Considering you won't exactly survive me stabbing you in a second."_

-Asmodeus the Overlord, just before executing the High Acolyte of the Mantellian Church of Light during the First Sacking of Mantle.

 **Two weeks ago**

To the rest of the world, Mistral looked like a terrifying calamity waiting to happen. The Dark Kingdom was led by an insane Royal family and backstab happy nobles that ruled over and an extremely nationalistic populace which, were on occasion, extremely disdainful of everyone who wasn't them. Add to that the fact that most of the Grim on Anima were rather docile and you suddenly had a population over a thousand times larger than the other kingdoms on the planet.

With such a threat on the literal horizon, each Kingdom had their own method of trying to counter the massive existential threat that an insane Mistral Lord could create. Atlas increased its efforts to create ludicrous amounts of robots while building insanely powerful weapons. Vale crippled Mistral with complicated legal proceedings, Tariff laws and, most ironically, fabricated claims of succession which attempted to throw a spanner in the mess of Mistral's political system. Vacuo didn't care, realising that any Mistralian invasion would be decimated by both the desert and the sandworms who lived in it, Grimm or otherwise.

Despite all these efforts, Mistral barely felt any disruption to anything the world did to it, remaining tied for being the most powerful Kingdom alongside Atlas.

So, with all this in mind, the reigning question was what was stopping Mistral from causing a World War and killing everyone?

The answer, as Leonardo Lionheart had found during his many years as headmaster of Haven academy, was that Mistral was functionally retarded.

And he meant that in the medical sense.

Originally when he had come to Haven to take over from the previous headmaster, he had thought that the people of Mistral had hated him because he was a Faunus. It was an understandable mistake, considering that the fighting in the Faunus Revolution had been especially… genocidal.

That wasn't true however, as the local Faunus hated him just as much. Maybe he wasn't Faunus enough? While faunus all over Remnant had animal traits, the ones found in Mistral faunus were greatly exaggerated. Leonardo had seen spider faunus before, but he didn't think anyone else would have blamed him when he had screamed upon seeing one with eight legs and an abdomen for the first time. Poor girl was just tending her flower shop at the time.

As Leonardo slowly grew accustomed to Mistral, he that he was wrong once again.

The reason why Mistral spend time directing its hate to the other Kingdoms? It was too busy hating itself.

Mistral had divided itself along culture, which just so happened to be associated with geography. West Mistral, due to its proximity to Vale, had a near identical culture to the nearby Kingdom. Individuality focused with democracy loving rulers, a Valean could be forgiven for thinking that they never left Vale. The one difference between them and the actual citizens to Vale was intensity. As a culture, they were intensely overbearing on forcing their way of life over others to the point where every other Mistrali, including Leonardo, hated them.

The rest of the major cultures were far simpler.

The North, mainly ruled by the Nikos families, had a heavy warrior, merit and honour based society whose biggest flaw was the intense battle lust that dominated every single one of those oxygen deprived idiots. It went without saying that the city around Haven had the same culture.

The South was full of villages who were in denial about being Mistralian, very sulky Grimm, Blood crazed cultists and bandit tribes. A true Wildland full of equally ignorant wildlings.

The East was the most populated part of Mistral. A proper hive of backstabbing, dark magic, nobles who take pride in Evil and an insane patriotic population.

They all hated each other and they all hated Leonardo too.

That was why, instead of relaxing in his home as he sipped from a local and expensive brand of whisky, he was dealing with piles of letters demanding admission for someone's child to Haven and even larger piles of general threats/hate mail.

Leonardo sighed as he read one of the letters from the Hate mail pile.

"So little imagination nowdays." He muttered to himself. "Feed my tail to an abused beowolf? Like I don't hear that everyday."

Leonardo looked around his office, putting the frankly boring threat letter to the back of his mind with the thousands of other letters he had received over the years.

In the beginning of his career, he had been enamoured with the spacious office, his large desk looking over the half circle shaped office. His eyes roamed over the room, passing over the couches that made up the seating area and resting on the large bookshelves scattered around the walls on the room, all of it receiving a pleasing amount of light from the collection of windows behind him.

Leonardo let out a soft chuckle when his attention passed over the exact type of books that rested on those shelves. Ozpin would definitely not approve on the excessively large amount of Dark tomes and grimoires that Leonardo's former students had gifted him on those bookshelves. Despite his feelings about Mistral, Ozpin was right about teaching at least. One could find a good amount of pride in training hunters, even in the hive of stupid that was Mistral.

Leonardo was suddenly dragged from his reminiscing by a significant amount of yelling from behind the door to his office. One voice he clearly recognised as his secretary, the other was significantly more masculine than her's and, most importantly, impossibly cultured.

"Atlesian then…" Leonardo mumbled to himself. He had found that he had been doing that a lot this year.

How fortunate for him that he didn't particularly care.

It only took a few moments for the inevitable to happen and the door to his office burst open and the interloper to his private time entered the room, followed by his aggravated secretary, already reaching for her weapons that were concealed within her blouse and pencil skirt pockets.

After a moment of looking at the uninvited guest, Leonardo sighed. A tall, almost rail-thin man with short dark hair, hilariously large moustache and clothes that simultaneously looked practical and formal?

Yeah, this entitled Atlesian wasn't going to be any trouble.

"Jaida?" Leonardo addressed his secretary who immediately stopped, her collapsible twin daggers half-drawn, her thin green antenna twitching madly from just passed the fringe of her short, brown hair. "I can deal with this."

Jaida, putting her daggers away with a sigh that she had given out many times while clicking her Jaw mandibles. Leonardo was still amazed at just how human, well faunus, she looked despite the insect appendages jutting out from her cute, round face.

"I'm sorry, Professor. He just walked past me and just ignored me when I tried to stop him verbally." Jaida explained with a grimace. The fact that she was about to use significantly more forceful measures went unsaid.

"Atlesians normally do." Leonardo confirmed. "Say, is my three o'clock here?"

"She arrived an hour ago." Jaida nodded, her mandibles calming down now that her mind was elsewhere. "She offered to help Professor Nikos with organising the footage for combat class."

Leonardo nodded. Knowing her, it would make sense that she would want to make sure that future Huntresses and Huntsmen would have the best possible combat education.

"Could you please send for her? This shouldn't take long." Leonardo gave her a genuine smile, trying to show just how unworried he was.

Jaida nodded and with a smile and a twitch to the antenna on her forehead, she turned and walked back to her desk. As she went, Leonardo's eyes were naturally drawn to the pair of mantis like legs that were fully visible poking out of her skirt.

As the clicking of Jaida's feet faded away, Leonardo turned towards the interloper with half-lidded eyes.

"Who in Remnant are you?"

If Leonardo's blunt question had affected the man in any way, he didn't show it. Instead, he gave Haven's headmaster a grin with a level of smugness that Leonardo had only seen nobles and Atlesians match.

"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Doctor Arthur Watts and I believe that we have an… associate in common."

Leonardo's eyes narrowed.

"You'll have to forgive me Mr Watts-"

"Dr Watts, actually."

" **Mr** Watts, but I know a quite many people. You will have to jog my memory."

Arty, as Leonardo had started calling him mentally, gestured to the air around him as though he was in some sort of lecture hall.

"Come, surely you couldn't have forgotten her. She is a rather remarkable woman after all."

Leonardo sighed.

"You aren't helping. I will have to ask you to be more specific."

Arty now sighed, but while Leonardo's was one of resignation and general indifference, Arty's was full of frustration.

"I assure you Professor Lionheart, she is quite unforgettable and is adept in the art of being quite... menacing."

Leonardo placed his elbow on the armrest of his chair and rested his head on his fist, taking the opportunity to stare at Arty blankly.

"Well?" Arty asked after a short while.

"You know that you just described every Mistrali female born to a noble family and every Huntress? Ever?"

By now Arty's frustration seemed to reach the point where he pinched the bridge of his nose, causing Leonardo to grow a slight grin at the other man's displeasure.

"Fine, Fine. She is associated with the Grimm!"

Leonardo's stare was once again blank.

"Okay, fine. I will give you a significantly more _direct_ description. You incompetent buffoon."

 _"Aah petty Insults. Truly the sign that a prim and proper Atlesian had reached terminal irritation. Oh how I enjoy seeing such a sight."_ Leonardo thought to himself as Arty's face started turning a rather alarming shade of red. It suddenly occurred to Leonardo that he might have infact said his thoughts aloud. After a moment of thought, he realised that he didn't care that much but if he pushed Arty's obvious buttons too hard then things would likely get unpleasant.

And he had expanded the Office cleaning budget too far already.

"Look," Leonardo interjected with his hand partially raised, cutting off the inevitable burst of insults that would have come from Arty. "I know exactly who you mean. You work for Salem don't you?"

Arty immediately looked like he had taken a bite out of a lemon at the casual mention of the Mistress of all Grimm.

"I would ask you to not be so blaze when referring to someone of such power." Arty ground out, his gritted teeth now visible just below his huge moustache. Leonardo shrugged in response. It was useless being respectful of someone who wanted you dead anyway.

"Now, that you know who I am representing, lets-"

"Do you have an appointment?" Leonardo interrupted, his voice as flat as his expression. At this, Arty's face contorted in confusion.

"What? No. Now-"

"Then come back when you have one." Leonardo ordered, a note of aggression entering his voice. "And I do have a message for your employer."

"This isn't a matter for discussion!" Arty yelled as

"While I would like to insult Salem's inexperience at threatening someone, I would rather you simply inform her that I would prefer to be threatened in person in the future." Leonardo continued, ignoring Arty's sputtering as he searched for something in his desk draws.

"I really think you shou-"

"Found it." Leonardo interrupted as he threw a tentacled creature at Arty, which he caught. Arty's eyes widened as he turned the creature around, revealing a badly abused Jellyfish like Grimm that softly warbled in his hands. Leonardo could tell that Arty had seen one of those Grimm before, which was only further evidence to who exactly he was working for. Leonardo couldn't stop a smile as Arty's eyes boggled as he noted the number of missing tentacles from the creature, the cracks along the bone carapace on its body and the complete lack of the collection of grisly teeth that used to be around the creature's singular mouth.

"What?" Arty stiltedly asked at a loss for words, his eyes not leaving the crippled Grimm. "How even?"

"Well, I had thought the Grimm was an excellent gift until I realised that it made a horrendous mop, the tentacles are significantly too fragile to floss with and it's ability to float completely removes it's use as a large sport ball, even if it was fun to try." Leonardo sighed. "Sadly, the only use it seemed adept at was as a chew toy for the campus pets but I spoil them too much so…"

"What did you even give this to? Dogs?"

"Of course not," Leonardo scoffed. "I gave it to the Campus Creeps. For feral Grimm, they really don't like Salem's custom jobs."

Arty went completely quiet as he contemplated the Grimm in his hands.

"Its called a Seeker." Arty whispered as he seemed to catalogue the sheer amount of damage the Grimm had taken without dying.

"Sir, Miss Arc is here!" Jaida's voice came from beyond the open door.

"Thank you, Jaida! Send her through please." Leonardo shouted back with a smile on his face. This was going to be fun.

Engrossed in his studies, Leonardo smiled when he noticed that Arty had failed to notice the heavily armoured woman enter behind him.

Leonardo remembered Joan Arc fondly as one of his best students, and she had taken that excellence into her Hunting career as well. It was odd that an Arc descendant had come to Haven academy but over the years Leonardo had learned that Joan was… different from the rest of her family.

She stood tall, almost reaching Arty in height. Her blond hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail which allowed full vision to her strangely orange eyes. The rest of her was clad in an odd combination between the Black steel plate armour that old Mistrali knights used to use and a simple black pants and white shirt combination. To add to the look of being some modern warrior, Joan had her twohanded sword strapped to her back.

"Ahh. Hello Joan. Its been a long time." Leonardo smiled at his former student. While he found himself hating almost everyone these days, he found that his students were often never on the list of people he hated.

"It hasn't been that long, Professor Lionheart." Joan laughed. "I was here last week! Surely you can't have gone senile in that time. Or is Jaida _distracting_ you?" she finished with a wink at the seated professor.

Leonardo laughed. It was nice to be the subject of such good natured teasing. Not that he cared about what other people said anymore.

Things tended not to bother you when you made sure that you were one of the strongest people in a Kingdom.

"Unfortunately, my dear, I fear that she is holding out hope for someone with significantly more antennas than I have. But I do have something for you."

Joan stepped forward, her face expressing deep interest. Arty remained oblivious to the blond huntress who unintentionally stood next to him.

 _Not for long…_ Leonardo thought with a smile.

"The man next to you, Arty, is involved with quite the organisation. An organisation that has been responsible for quite a number of Grimm attacks on innocents over the years." Leonardo spoke with barely concealed amusement.

"Oh really?" Joan's voice was blank as she turned towards Arty next to her, rage starting to fill her features. Arty was still oblivious to it all as he muttered his observations of the strange Grimm.

"Yes, really. He admitted to it me himself." Leonardo couldn't stop himself from grinning at what was about to happen.

Arty let out a choked garble as Joan interrupted his observations of the engineered Grimm as Joan seized Arty by the neck.

"By the Light, I am in my full rights to cut you down where you stand for your crimes against the innocents of Remnant!" Joan yelled in Arty's face, fury evident on her own. "What do you have to say for yourself, Arty?"

Leonardo had learned long ago that, for all its useful protections, Aura barriers had almost no defence against strangulation which, by the shade of his face, Arty was learning right now. Honestly, it was pretty dumb considering many Grimm had grasping limbs, easily capable of snapping unwary necks, even if they belonged to trained Hunters. He knew it had something to do with the fact that your Aura protected one from injury but the neck was still pretty flexible and thus, it was possible to cut off one's airflow. Cutting off the airflow disrupted the concentration of the victim. Thus, the Aura would start to fail from the distraction. Then the neck would snap without protection, pretty much killing the victim.

Thankfully for all Huntsmen and Huntresses, there didn't seem to be a Grimm that was patient enough to take advantage of such a glaring weakness, much to Leonardo's eternal disappointment.

Arty was experiencing this weakness first hand as the oldest Arc daughter lifted him off his feet, hanging by the neck as he tried to gargle out a response.

"Enough of your pathetic mewling!" Joan yelled in his face, not even acknowledging his inability to speak. "While I am in my full right to execute you as a traitor to humanity, the Light teaches us all forgiveness and as such, I will give you a chance to repent!"

Leonardo sighed as he was once again reminded why Joan was the black sheep – or white sheep rather- of the Arc Family. You know how parents always say that they didn't know what they were doing when they raised their first kid? Well, the Arcs really were that bad.

Somehow, their oldest had become a sort of paladin, specifically of the religion that declared her ancestors as some sort of Dark God. Considering the Arcs, they may be right but that didn't dull the effect on the poor girl's attitude.

Headstrong, naieve and quick to anger and action, Joan Arc was the political equivalent of a guided brick for her family and others, intentionally or otherwise. A trait that was extremely convenient for Leonardo at the moment, especially when it came to someone he didn't want to talk to.

Leonardo subtly moved his hand under his desk and pressed the button that he knew would be there, causing the window behind him to split in the middle and slide to the sides of the pane, clearing the way to the campus below.

Almost instinctually, Joan started to drag the squirming man to the open window as she continued shouting demands for repentance. Arty for his part was trying to resist, attempting to draw the weapons that were no doubt hidden on his person while simultaneously trying to protect his airways from Joan's crushing grip. Unfortunately for him, surprise and the lack of oxygen was getting to him and did neither particularly well.

It wasn't long before Joan had dragged Arty to the window, Leonardo swivelling his chair to face the ongoing scene with a smile on his face.

"While this is amusing my dear, but unfortunately, we have a schedule to keep…" Leonardo said, trying to keep his tone nonchalant.

As though breaking free from a trance, Joan looked around until she noticed that she was near the window.

Then she smiled at the squirming Doctor in her grip.

Leonardo kind of felt sorry for Arty, only being a pawn of Salem whether he knew it or not. He really didn't deserve to be manhandled by the third most powerful Huntress in Mistral but Leonardo was having too much fun to speak up for the manipulated idiot. A break from the monotony of paperwork was always welcome.

"You are lucky that the Professor is right, monster." Joan spoke with a sickly-sweet tone to her voice, causing Arty to struggle slightly more. "So, if my words cannot convince you to change your ways, then perhaps gravity will…"

Arty knew, from personal experience with Joseph Arc's window, that the only thing that you learned from the experience is to avoid blonde people near windows. It was funny however, when it wasn't happening to you.

"Please, Doctor Arty, return when you have made an appointment." Leonardo commented towards Arty as he was dangled out the window, attempting to sound professional through his grin.

"Be gone when I am finished if you please." Joan instructed her squirming captive.

Then she let go, and the "evil" Atlesian scientist dropped out of sight, unable to yell as he was to busy gasping for air. It didn't take long for Leonardo to hear the distinctive thump of someone hitting the grass below his window. Leonardo nodded as he closed his window again, Arty would probably be fine.

The office was only on the ninth floor after all.

With the window closed, Leonardo and Joan turned towards each other.

"Thank you for your assistance, Joan" Leonardo spoke sincerely. "I assume you are here for the first pick on the latest Grimm bounties?"

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For Jaune and Pyrrha, walking through the Enchanted forest was a strange experience.

For Pyrrha, it was the fact that the forest was apparently magical.

For Jaune, It was the fact that it was a forest at all.

As the son of the Lord of The Dark Kingdom, or more widely known as Mistral, his youth had always been an odd one. To one of the heirs of the Arc family, and more specifically the Shield Heir, Magic was hardly new. He had survived hundreds of assassination attempts that involved the irritating phenomenon but there were only three that stood out and had told him all he needed to know.

One was the time that someone had charmed a Grimm poltergeist to possess the books in the family library to beat him to death, but had possessed a bunch of soft cover comics instead. The second one was a small faunus girl who had made a defective Aspect doll of him that accidentally hurt her when she tried to torture him with it. The third had been when a woman with flaming eyes had tried to freeze his family to death during a public address, which had been foiled by a surprise shot to the throat by his Dad's champion's wife.

That taught Jaune that magic could be pretty stupid, Unpredictable, incredibly deadly and generally the domain of someone that couldn't do things for themselves.

Not exactly something that Jaune wanted to rely on.

So to find a forest that had eaten enough " _Light"_ magic to try to cause anything with " _Dark"_ magic to have a full body aneurism was not exactly surprising to Jaune.

No, his unease was far more mundane.

As a Shield Heir, Jaune was fully expected to enter the political world of Mistral and such things like trips to the wilderness was not a priority to his Family Guard. While he had loudly complained at the time, he now understood exactly why his younger self wasn't allowed to play in the dark, foreboding, Grimm-infested forest.

It was obvious in hindsight really…

After his initiation into Beacon and trip to Forever Fall, Jaune was now knowledgeable enough to know that his father was completely right to keep him out of them. Now Jaune, Pyrrha and a creature out of legend were walking through a deadly _magical_ forest, taking cover in a circle of _magic_ that killed the deadly forest temporarily in order to find away into the base of the Legendary Dark Tower.

Dad was right when he said that forests were more trouble than they were worth.

"So, wait," Pyrrha inquired towards Gnarl, who was leading the way to… wherever we were going. "If the forest is full of this Light magic, which keeps it alive despite this place once being a wasteland, and we are full of this Dark magic, which we have in our bodies from living in Mistral and is the opposite of the Light, then why doesn't the forest try to kill us?"

Anyone else would have thought that Pyrrha was asking that question because she was worried and why wouldn't she be? Only around half of his family believed in magic in the first place and that accounted for over half of those who knew about the strange practice. Even Joan, the thought of his older sister bringing a feeling of embarrassment to his stomach, had utterly denied the existence of magic even when Melina had tamed a Creep using a blood sacrifice from a raw steak.

Jaune could tell that Pyrrha wasn't worried however. She was focused, like she was in every fight that JNPR had. He knew Pyrrha well enough to know that she saw the Forest as an enemy, something to beat into submission. It was one of the things he liked about his partner, she was always so focused when it was time for action and she was never unsure about what her next move was. Jaune hoped that he could be like that someday.

It… also helped that Pyrrha always sounded nervous whenever she was focused. Like always.

Gnarl gave out an amused chuff at the question.

"Light magic? Trying to kill someone? Like that pathetic excuse of an arcana could even kill an insect." Gnarl shook his head dismissively. "No, I'm afraid that your unfortunate reactions to the forest were not by any attack. In fact, I bet there is so little actual intelligence here that eve the rocks have lost what little intellect that they had."

"What do you mean?" Jaune interjected.

Gnarl stopped and gestured to the forest around them.

"Take a look and tell me what you see." Gnarl said bitterly.

Both Jaune and Pyrrha took a look around them, trying to see what the minion was talking about. Whatever it was, Jaune couldn't see it. There was nothing happening around them, just the insects buzzing and the birds singing in the distance.

"Harmony." Pyrrha breathed, eyes wide as though some terrible truth had been revealed. "Everything is in harmony." Gnarl nodded to her in appreciation.

"I. I don't get it." Jaune spoke his thoughts on the matter, still looking around.

Pyrrha grabbed Jaune's hand and pointed it to a nearby tree.

"Look there! Do you see that there?"

"That's a bird." It was a beautiful bird with a Blue and white pattern sitting on one of the lower branches on the tree.

"That's right." Pyrrha nodded towards him. "Now, look at the branch that its standing on."

Jaune looked closely. "Pyrrha, its just a bunch of bugs."

"Exactly Jaune. That bird is an Valean Sorrow." At Jaune's look of confusion, Pyrrha continued. "It's a voracious Insect eater. That branch should have been picked clean of bugs, not having them run around its feet."

Jaune looked at the bird again, happily ignoring the supposed food at its feet. Why wasn't it…

And like that, Jaune started to pick up on other details. Insects were short lived, they needed to spend as much time as they could eating and breeding in order to have a viable population. The Insects on that tree… They were just sitting there. They scuttled around the bark but that was all they did. His gazed onto another bird, a red and black one that ate fruit if he remembered Nora correctly, that was just sitting under a particularly juicy apple, completely ignoring it. Next, he saw a large spider in another tree, seemingly content with the lady bug who was resting on its head. Jaune knew that he had absolutely no experience in the wild but… this was _unnatural_.

"Why are they like this? Why isn't anything eating? Why aren't they acting normally?" Jaune asked out loud, thoroughly unnerved by the odd pantomime of forest life that lay before him.

"Why my Lord, this is what Light magic does to those of simple minds." Gnarl let out a cruel chuckle at the look of confusion on Jaune's face. " _Good_ magic restores you, keeps you rested and well nourished. Have those things for long enough and you get complacent, lazy and stupid."

Jaune's eyes felt as if they widened by meters as he realised what the ancient minion meant. A quick glance to Pyrrha, showed that she was of a similar mind.

"They are all full." Jaune breathed out, only the noises of the forest greeting his revelation. "None of the animals are hungry so they don't know what to do. They don't hunt each other because there isn't any need…"

"And with that My Lord, you have found exactly why your blood does not like _Goodness and Fairies and Happy Endings_ and all of that poppycock. Your blood is that of conquers, that of fighters, of Overlords! It can't stand being coddled, can't stand being given something it did not take for itself. The very charity of it all makes it feel unease. The strength of darkness in both your and her simply amplified the appropriate disgust you should naturally feel."

"So, if someone stayed in this forest they would become like the animals?" Pyrrha chimed in.

"It takes longer, depending on your proclivity towards Evil, but yes. You would become a grass eating, harmony loving, absolutely useless hippie." Gnarl shrugged. "And who knows, maybe you would forget to breathe, just like some of these birds did, and die the second you left the forest. Or worse, sit here for all time as your brain atrophies until you can do nothing but sit there and chirp. Come along now, Young Lord. The sooner we end this, the sooner this place will return to what it was supposed to be."

Gnarl turned around and started walking away. Jaune and Pyrrha followed, their minds too metaphorically blown and creeped out by the forest around them that they didn't feel like talking.

That was fine, because Jaune was too busy not trying to notice that many of the birds they were passing were, in fact, not breathing.

Oddly enough, it seemed that no matter the circumstances, over time one's shock simply dissipated into nothing.

After an hour of walking, Jaune and Pyrrha's shock, surprise, horror and subconscious fascination at the forest around them had eventually deteriorated into a mild wariness. Lacking anything else to do, the JP part of JNPR had started to simply… talk.

Between the two partners, that wasn't a rare occurrence, but a small part of both of them was acutely aware that such an innocent thing such as small-talk was happening in a magic death circle, with rapidly regrowing plants behind them, in a magical forest that could kill them. To Pyrrha, it was all a bit overwhelming and she took comfort in the normalcy of talking with her partner. To Jaune, he was far more comfortable with the situation, having Melina as a sister had taught him to go with the flow.

The two were on the topic of the cloud shapes above them when Gnarl shouted that they had finally reached their destination.

"Yes! This is it!" Gnarl yelled enthusiastically. "We can almost enter the tower!"

Jaune looked around. The group had come to a stop just outside a massive wall of trees and bushes, their leaves blocking the path forward. It was odd… Most of the trees in the forest were taller than he was, giving everyone an almost unobstructed view of the beautiful stretches of forest.

The obscuring layer of plants in front of the group seemed to stretch in a straight line into the distance on both Jaune's left and right.

The layer of leaves, bark and bushes that blocked their destination… the perfect line it made… It looked deliberate. As though it was a wall of some kind.

It was definitely magic.

"Gnarl?" Pyrrha asked, absently palming Milo in it's spear form. "The base of the Tower is the way we came. Why couldn't we enter the ruins there? Why are we here?"

Jaune sighed. Gnarl had told them already and Jaune knew that Pyrrha hadn't forgotten what he had said to them. She was pushing Gnarl, making sure that what he told them wasn't a story that changed every time he told it.

Pyrrha did this when she didn't trust that you were being honest with her. She did this with Nora when she denied eating all the breakfast pancakes. She did it with Jaune when he was being evasive about something and she even did it with Ruby whenever Yang asked for help keeping Ruby's diet.

"As I said earlier, the forest blocks the path into the depths below the Tower, where we need to go." Gnarl gestured towards the leaf wall. "Behind this wall is the heart of this magic forest and from here, we will be able to remove any… obstacles to our destination.

Pyrrha's gaze narrowed as her hand started to absently rub the armour on her leg, being in the perfect spot to draw her weapon in moments.

"Oh? You never mentioned going beneath the tower before. What exactly is waiting there for us to find?" Pyrrha asked, her voice too sweet for the steely gaze that she was giving Gnarl.

Gnarl, for his own part, looked significantly more annoyed than worried that he had been caught in what Jaune considered a small misdirection. He trusted Pyrrha, even after only being her partner for a few months he knew that she was great…

Like… Really great.

But hadn't met plenty of people like Gnarl in Mistral? They were people like him in almost every bar and Tavern handing out potentially dangerous assignments to travelling Hunters. They were the perfect people to keep those Hunters thinking about the large caches of weapons in the lair of a vicious Grimm instead of the viciousness of said Grimm. Considering that Gnarl didn't back down, then surely he had a good reason for not mentioning it right? Perhaps it was a treasure that you could only find if you didn't know what you were looking for?

Jaune coughed into his hand, dragging the attention of his two companions back towards himself. Despite what some of his less than stellar attempts wooing Weiss said, he wasn't completely oblivious and his Partner beating up their guide would only complicate their day further.

Especially since they needed Gnarl's help to leave when they were done here.

"So, we arrived at the Heart of the Forest. How do we get in?" He directed the question towards the minion. Gnarl's expression immediately brightened while Pyrrha shot him a pointed look. Jaune sent her one in return, drawing on every part of him that had been raised as a Prince to ask her to _please_ not cause any trouble before they could successfully run away with the relic.

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It was a small personal pride of Pyrrha's that she could keep calm in the tensest situations. They said that fear kept you alive, but panic killed you quickly as anyone in the Mistral tournament could attest. The second she had mastered that skill, she had found that things became clearer, smoother and she could act faster and more accurately than she had ever before. It had turned difficult matches like a man that used projectile Ursa as his weapons into a match she could easily beat.

And then Jaune gave her the _look_.

It was a look that screamed dominance. It told anyone who saw it that disobedience wouldn't be tolerated under the pain of well… exactly that.

It was the look of someone who had come from a family that had committed atrocities daily and had beaten down anything in their way.

A part of her told her that her partner was just frowning a bit.

The rest of her was certain that his eyes had glowed bright orange for just a moment, making it look entirely demonic.

She could feel her heart beat so fast that she felt it was going to jump out her throat.

She wanted to argue, to scream at her partner that his life was far to precious to lie on the word of a deceitful little creature like Gnarl.

But the rest of her wanted to _Obey_.

And so she did.

And she did not know why.

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 _Oh dammit._ Jaune cursed internally as he saw Pyrrha's eyes widen and her face take on a tinge of red as she took an involuntary step back. _I used the expression Dad taught me by mistake, didn't I?_

The biggest problem with Dad's favorite expression, the one that he taught his children to have their own versions of, was that it looked dumb. Furrowed brow, wide eyes and mouth tilted just the right way? It looked dumb.

Hopefully Pyrrha was not going to burst out laughing any second now.

The fact that Gnarl was now grinning ear to ear didn't inspire confidence…

Thankfully, Gnarl didn't waste any more time and pointed to the trees behind him.

"To gain entrance to the heart, simply touch it with your gauntlet, my Lord."

Eager to avoid further embarrassment, Jaune quickly moved up to the solid wall of foliage and placed his gauntleted hand against it. He had expected it to open up to the side or simply fade away as though it was an illusion. Jaune didn't expect the wall itself to begin rotting. It only took moments for the wall to rot away, revealing one of the most beautiful gardens he had ever seen, with what seemed to be a massive hedge maze in the middle. While Jaune looked around in wonder, Gnarl was already doing a pretty good impression of a sprint towards the Maze.

"Quickly, Ma- My Lord. We must get to the center of the maze before that blasted hippy finds the whole we made!"

Galvanised by the minion's haste, Pyrrha and Jaune actually sprinted into the garden and into the maze.

Just as he entered the maze, Jaune swore he could hear a voice that seemed to resonate with what seemed to be every plant in the forest.

"WHAT IN THE SEVEN LAYERS OF THE ABYSS BROKE MY BEAUTIFUL WALL?!"

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	9. 8: A Message Sent (Awakening Part 1)

**This chapter was originally going to be 12k and have Jaune's continuing adventure in it to. However, in the interests of decreasing the time you guys needed to wait, I decided to post Joseph's finished part here.**

 **Hope you enjoy.**

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It might have sounded odd to most people, but Joseph didn't like flying.

That was especially true after a day like today.

It hadn't been the first time that Melina Arc had been kidnapped. No, she usually orchestrated the kidnappings herself either as a way to get something she wanted or in a form of tantrum when Joseph or his wife wouldn't let her read some of the more… adult books in their family library.

If he were honest with himself, his daughter summoning a Grimm through traditional blood sacrifice was going to happen eventually. What was surprising was that she had summoned such a complex and intelligent Grimm. He felt a bit of pride at that.

It reminded him of the first time he had met his lovely Juniper.

At the moment, there was nothing he would like more than standing with Juniper at the family stables, as they would giggle at their Daughter trying to feed a Nukelavee her favourite meal of cheese puffs.

But, unfortunately, being the Lord of Mistral took precedence at a time like this.

It was customary to send a message to anyone stupid enough to kidnap Melina and If anyone else but the White Fang had kidnapped his little librarian, he could have sent someone else to do it in his stead. Crassius always enjoyed being sent, he used the time to work on his wood carving. He would send Joan if he didn't want anyone surviving. He could have sent Olivia, his second eldest daughter who always wanted to test out some of her new gadget designs.

His son, Jaune, was vindictive enough to probably extend the 'visit' to the kidnapper's distant relatives but compassionate enough to leave them all unharmed but homeless.

But no. These weren't the usual unreliable scions of some noble family, desperate poor or even stupid as rock Hunter/Bandit/Rebels.

These were the White Fang and that was a problem.

The White Fang was a Faunus equalist, now Faunus-supremecist, organisation that had been formed after the Faunus Revolution to ensure that the rights of all Faunus were respected as though they were human.

That was a… problem for Mistral. This was because despite all of the White Fang's posturing about Faunus being the same as humans, they really weren't.

Or at least not the Mistral ones.

For most Faunus around Remnant, the only difference between humans and themselves was normally a set of silly ears, a tail and maybe some mannerisms. Mistral Faunus were actual hybrids of animals and no where near human. There were some that looked like a rhino had learned to stand upright and grow hands, some who were covered in chitin with antennae and even some who had a giant spider body for their lower half. Both the Faunus and humans of mistral knew, instinctually, that they weren't the same.

During the Faunus revolution, no matter how much each side had tried to deny it, there had always been a shred of empathy between Faunus and humans, preventing both sides from committing true atrocities against each other.

There was no empathy like that in Mistral. Both sides treated the war as not a civil right issue but an extermination.

Drider eggs being crushed to a crowd's applause, human adults and children stuffed into feeding camps to nourish the more monstrous of Faunus, slow boiling of countless frog Faunus, stealing human babies by Coyote faunus, Killing Rhino Faunus for their horns…

Mistral had been in the middle of a species war and it would have been worse had Joseph's grandfather not escalated to a point that had even made his grandmother sick to her stomach when it happened.

Julius Arc had decreed a stop to the fighting, stating that everyone was a citizen of Mistral and any further violent 'insurrection' would be met with indiscriminate slaughter and display of their remains in the nearest public square.

It took six depopulated cities for the Humans to get the message.

The Faunus, however, had been cajoled into a racial frenzy by their international cousins and declared Julius to be an oppressor of the Faunus people and that they would overthrow him.

Julius' white-gold guardsman had slaughtered and displayed over fifty percent of Mistral's Faunus population before they surrendered.

With a stark reminder that the Arc family were, infact, the true tyrants of Mistral and were sick of all this race nonsense, the hatred between human and Faunus died out quickly. There would never be true equality between Human and Faunus in Mistral, they were too different for that and after the Revolution, they accepted that and worked past it, both slowly becoming proud of their own species and differences, if slightly predjudiced about it.

Mistral Faunus, and Julius Arc, never forgot who had driven them to an almost genocidal mistake and these perpetrators had gone on to make the White Fang.

In response to the, admittedly unintentional, incitement of the populace, members of the White Fang were banned from setting foot on Mistral by pain of death. With the hated of Mistral Faunus against them, often the authorities wouldn't even have to enforce the death part when a misguided activist came to try to incite something.

To have an entire cell of the White Fang be responsible for kidnapping Melina this time, meant it wasn't just a bunch of stupid kids. It was organised, approved and set up by a higher authority in the Fang, and in order to get them so deep in Mistral it needed to be at the very top.

When Ghira Belladonna had been in charge, the White Fang respected Mistral, the man being firmly pacifistic. Sure Joseph and he had some arguments, some involving the large cat man flying through a window, but the two leaders were mostly amicable.

Sienna Kahn was… another story.

The tiger faunus was part of a more militant and violent generation, tired of the slow progress of protests and rallies. To someone like her, Joseph was the greatest enemy the White Fang had in their path to equality and it was likely that she was just headstrong enough to ignore anything the Old guard said about dealing with Mistral.

It was obvious, looking at everything Joseph knew, that Melina's scheming had been the perfect opportunity to send a message in her eyes. A message that said 'Hey look! Mistral is a chump compared to the awesome White Fang!'

That was why Joseph, personally, had to send back a reply. Probably reading something along the lines of 'Get of my province you socially challenged hooligans!'

That was also why Joseph, after dropping Melina and her pet off safely at home, had grabbed some of his more unscrupulous guardsmen, plus Crassius, and made their way to Menagerie in their fleet of Dropships.

That had been six hours ago and now Joseph could see the harbour of Menagirie's capital city approaching rapidly in the distance.

From his familiar seat in the dropship, he watched as his soldiers, clad in their white and gold armour, checking their guns, straps and whatever equipment they might be carrying around with them. He saw his faithful bodyguard and friend cleaning his custom Dust carbine which would have been a mounted gun if it wasn't for Crassius' sheer size as typical of his subspecies of Faunus. Joseph also took note of Crassius' freshly polished horn in the middle of his forehead, a pride and joy for any Mistrali Rhino Faunus.

Like the rest of the Guardsmen around him, Crassius was appropriately armoured for his size which left Joseph feeling a bit naked in nothing but a pair of Jeans, a belt and running shoes. It was odd going into a fight shirtless but he knew his Aura could take it and a shirtless man destroying an entire bastion of fighters would definitely send the right type of message.

"Hey, Crassius." Joseph spoke to his friend who looked towards him questioningly. "Don't forget that we are only killing White Fang today. Not any of the plain clothes guys."

Crassius looked back to his weapon, remaining silent.

" _Crassius."_ Joseph repeated in a warning tone.

"Most of them probably support the White Fang anyway. Why _shouldn't_ we start shooting immediately when we land?" Crassius replied, the clear distaste in his tone causing him to sigh. The Faunus of Mistral hated the idea of Menagerie. An island retreat of Faunus who harboured the White Fang headquarters and still whined about Humans despite none being around for literal kilometres made any of the integrated Mistrali Faunus mad, the more inhuman the more mad.

Mistrali Faunus had a hard culture and, after over half of their population had been purged, they couldn't afford to whine when trying to reclaim their place in society, creating a massive societal trend towards self-reliance and survivability in Faunus families. This made all the Faunus in Menagerie seem like spoiled brats to the average Mistrali and with their close ties with the White Fang...

"Because they are some that don't. And just shooting everyone will just make us look like the bad guys in this."

Crassius gave Joseph a blank look.

"International PR is important, and I won't entertain thoughts of any atrocities from you today. Understood?"

Crassius sighed. Joseph knew that he wasn't the man to really talk about atrocities and Crassius was loyal to him for partly that reason, the blood knight that he is, but Ghira was one of the few country leaders that respected Mistral and Menagerie was a good trade partner of Mistral.

Keeping Ghira happy was worth all the trouble.

"Understood." Crassius echoed, a poorly disguised hint of disappointment clear in his tone. "But…"

"Yes?"

"If you didn't want any casualties, then why did you bring the Arak considering its so hard to control?" Crassius asked. A few of the nearby soldiers, who were close enough to listen to their conversation while checking their guns and equipment, nodded in aquience. They also wanted to know why.

"An Arak sends a powerful message don't you agree? And besides…"

Joseph smiled.

"I told him he can eat what he kills."

A satisfied clanging echoed through the dropship's cabin.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It was a calm night in the harbour of Menagerie. Although the Faunus dockworkers didn't need it, the well lit streets around the tropical harbour were worth it to make their late night loading of ships as pleasant as possible because everyone knew that the night was dark and full of terrors, so fixing one of those potential problems made everything better for the inhabitants of Menagerie and the occasional human ship crew.

It can be forgiven, that thanks to the bright streetlights and disgustingly pacifistic nature of the inhabitants that would make any Mistralian gag, that they failed to notice the army of White and God dropships before they were directly overhead. Well, most of them noticed. There were quite a few spectators too drunk or tired for the collective roar of at least twenty engines to rouse them from their stupor.

The rest noticed the presence of their erstwhile invaders when a veritable monster dropped from the bottom of one of the dropships and landed in the middle of the street.

At first glance, the monster looked like a five-meter-long giant headless tarantula where someone had replaced the typical hair of the species with a brown exoskeleton. On a second look, one would have seen something that might have been half of a greatly muscular man on top of the tarantula if it hadn't been covered in the same exoskeleton, having a split jaw where the chin would be and six red eyes on its head instead of the usual two. On a third look, one would notice that both of the two halves were armoured in White and Gold plating with one of the human arms having an attached gatling gun and what looked like a tank cannon placed firmly on the spider's thorax.

All in all, while mildly disturbing for a human to look at, the monstrous Faunus Arak's entire form, even without armour, was horrifying to every herbivore based Faunus and terrifying to every other Faunus. In fact, this sight was so engrossing that the Menagerie citizens in view of the Arak failed to notice the legion of White Gold Stormtroopers, both Mistrali Faunus and human, an especially large Rhino Faunus and a shirtless man.

This response was appropriate as Faunus was an Arak's favorite meal, just in front of humans and roast beef.

As the assembled group of invaders began moving into the city at a gesture from the shirtless man, one of the city guards gathered his courage.

"H-Hold up!" Onyx yelled as he ran to the front of the group, his black furred rabbit ears squarely pointing down. "What is y-your business here?"

The muscular shirtless man who had short blond hair and a short beard stepped in front of him with a friendly smile.

"Hello! It is good to meet a hard working guard of Menagerie!" The man spoke, the friendly tone not sounding completely genuine. "My name is Joseph Arc, Patriarch, Lord and previous Shield Heir of the prestigious Arc family and Lord of Mistral. I can safely say that you shouldn't worry my good man."

The man clapped the guard on the shoulder friendily, almost flooring Onyx.

"Why don't you get Mr Belladonna and tell him that these fine gentlemen and I are here on some business with the White Fang that shouldn't… Spill over onto the general populace."

"Did I hear something about needing to see the White Fang?" Onyx groaned through his nervousness as he turned to see Calico approaching. Calico was once again in his White Fang garb, his cat ears sticking up through his hood and his Grim mask on his face, and likely looking for some sort of shakedown.

Even though he hated him and the bad first impression that he gave travellers to the city, Onyx could only stare in horror as every armoured figure fired their guns at once into the rapidly dead cat faunus, only to be ripped in half by a hail of bullets from the massive spider man's gatling gun.

Onyx felt a rough hand on his shoulder.

"Don't worry about guiding us. We know where we are going."

With that, Joseph Arc released the traumatised guard and, as a group, the invaders moved towards the general direction of the White Fang headquarters.

Suddenly, the large Arak stopped and spoke in a guttural dialect that Onyx had no hope of recognising. Looking backwards, the shitless man gave a shrug and continued onwards.

Smiling, the spider man scooped up half of Calico's corpse with its free hand as it moved passed.

It was unsurprising that everyone in sight ran screaming when the Arak opened its massive jaw and began to eat its little snack.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Sienna Kahn was not a happy kitten.

Considering that she was a Bengal tiger Faunus, and incredibly furious, some part of her mind registered that as a very apt description of her.

"What the Hell do you mean that they haven't returned?"

That same part of her told her that the quivering ram Faunus she was shouting at would agree.

While she waited for her cowering subordinate to stop his blabbering and get enough courage to actually answer her question, she tried to make herself more comfortable in her throne and it was a throne, no matter what that old fart, Ghira had called it. She was sitting in an especially fancy and the only chair in a richly decorated two story hall on top of a miniature staircase while two guards in Grimm masks and armour guarded her while her 'petitioner' stood at the bottom of the staircase.

Sienna scoffed. When she had asked Ghira why she had to sit in the throne when a comfy beanbag would do, he had called it "just a simple chair".

Panther Faunus had a weird idea of simple.

Suddenly very aware of her black dress, black shorts, stockings, red cape and the golden rings in here ears, she realised that she really couldn't complain.

It was also a throne that was intensely uncomfortable for someone with a tail as she found out every day that she had to sit in the 'simple chair' and she vowed, not for the first time, to get it altered because it was only contributing to her already bad mood.

"Heather told me that Adam had called them for a hit he was planning and them leaving in the Bullhead was the last time anyone had seen them."

Sienna pinched the bridge of her nose as an uncomfortable feeling rose in her gut. Adam doing things had been doing that a lot recently.

"Which direction was the Bullhead traveling in?"

"Umm. North ma'am."

The feeling in her gut became even more uncomfortable. Adam Taurus had always been a very irritating pain in her side ever since she had managed to gain the trust of the White Fang and force the Old guard out of power. This was mostly because, while the New guard were united in their belief of the use of force to gain equality, there were far more divided on how far they had to go. Many factions inside the New guard want to simply beat up the Schnee Dust Company as an example for all racists. Some directed their wrath to every racist, throwing punches at anyone who would look at a Faunus wrong. One faction wanted to copy a Valean tactic and infiltrate every government to subvert the laws and make Faunus equality actual law.

In between all these factions, were Sienna and Adam. Sienna was popular with most of the White Fang for her stance of doing whatever it took, and no more than that. Adam had a following because he wanted to reverse the system, making it so that the Faunus would oppress the humans.

Adam's ideas were lofty, easy for the disadvantaged to like, easy for the SDC to point at and absolutely dangerous for any poor Faunus looking to destroy the 'injustices' of the world. Sienna, through all the typical White Fang rhetoric, understood that equality was all that they could hope for. The reason that Faunus were oppressed was a matter of a general lack of education, forcing them to take terrible jobs, and the fact that humans outnumbered them severely. Trying to start a genocidal war with the humans of the world would make what happened in Mistral look like a small mistake, especially if Mistral got involved.

Which Adam seems to have already done.

Whatever he had done, it must have been bad considering one of her people in Mistral had reported Heather, or at least her head, on display in Mistral's capital. Normally that didn't happen to White Fang, they were normally beaten up by local faunus and sent home. For her to get… butchered like that meant she had to do something stupid like…. Like…

Sienna's eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open as she remembered just what her spy had told her.

"Get me a direct line to Mistral!" Sienna yelled as she lept to her feet. "And double the guard! They could be coming any se-"

Sienna was interrupted by a sudden panicked shouting just outside the hall as the wooden double doors slammed open and one of the White Fang flew into the room, his neck bent awkwardly. Beyond the door was a large, blond, bearded shirtless human with an even larger man in armour with a large horn on his forehead, next to him.

Sienna tried to suppress the trill of fear that crawled down her spine as she recognised the unfortunate Faunus on the ground as one of her best guards in the entire White Fang compound. It was easy because she felt a deep rage building at the sight of yet another dead Faunus at human hands, especially at how nonchalant it was, the man grinning at her as he walked over the Faunus he just murdered as he entered the room.

"I am going to give you one chance to leave now, Human." Sienna growled out loud enough to carry through the hall, her rage building as the man looked her in the eyes and smiled. Her voice had dragged the White Fang around her out of their shocked stupor, drawing their weapons and aiming at the noticeably muscular and shirtless intruder.

"Crassius," The man prompted his friend. "Make sure our meeting remains private."

The Rhino Faunus nodded with a toothy grin and closed the door to the Hall, likely staying outside in the corridor. With his friend gone, the man turned back to Sienna and her guards with a friendly smile but Sienna saw a steel hardness in his eyes.

"I'm sorry for interrupting your peaceful evening like this." He apologised in a light tone. "Unfortunately, while I would love to be at home with my family, I do have some pressing issues to address for a man of my position."

"I am Joseph Arc. Lord of Mistral and father of the girl your people kidnapped yesterday." The man continued before Sienna could reply. "I'm here to send a message."

Then Joseph's face formed into a frown and he charged.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Joseph lept forward, his powerful legs further augmented with his aura launching him at a speed that only the best trained warriors would be able to follow.

Sienna and her guards managed it, the dark skinned tiger woman quickly drew her weapon from the back of her surprisingly form-fitting black dress, some form of collapsible spear, dropping her ridiculous red cape while two of her guards readied their halberds and the other two readied their assault rifles.

The lone White Fang in the middle of the hall was not as ready. He was clad in the typical white and black regalia of the White Fang, with a simple Grimm mask on his face. The Faunus jumped back as Joseph landed next to him, fumbling for his machete attached to the side of his belt and launching a panicked swing at the Blond Lord's head.

Joseph scoffed as he flicked the blade away with his index finger, the impact of the sharp instrument of death not even registering on his hardened aura as the Faunus reeled from the force of his finger. With a face of discontentment, Joseph counterattacked by a simple uppercut to the ram Faunus' chest at a fraction of his strength. His frown deepened as he felt the poor boy's aura shatter and his chest collapse, the force of the blow throwing him against the wall of the hall. Once again, Joseph Arc felt the bitter disappointment of one of his foes dying seconds into the start of combat.

Thankfully, Joseph's sorrow was cut short as the rest of the Faunus in the room attacked, their faces furious from the sudden death of the grunt.

 _Good._ He thought to himself.

The first attack that came for Joseph was a controlled burst of dust bullets from the two guards in the back, using slightly outdated Atlas assault carbines. They were easy to use, aim, deadly, had a good rapid fire and were perfect for indoor combat on a budget. They were also completely ineffective against Joseph, someone who had been training his aura since he was seventeen.

Ignoring the impacts of the bullets on his aura enhanced skin, the large lord charged up the stairs towards one of the halberd wielders who were charging towards him. As they approached each other, the stag faunus, clad in light armour painted the colours of the White Fang, stabbed his halberd forward, attempting to spear Joseph through his stomach. Joseph deflected the stab to the side but had to do a roll back down the stairs in order to dodge a jumping lunge from Sienna.

On his feet, at the bottom of the stairs, Joseph spun around, narrowly dodging a lunging thrust from the other melee guard. He could have taken the blow from the apparent crab Faunus, the gloves of her armour revealing her clawed hands, but Joseph didn't want to break their morale so early. Joseph retaliated by kicking the haft with his knee, flipping it up into the air and out of the guard's claws. Joseph caught it in mid air, broke it in half and threw the two parts at the two ranged guards.

Joseph grinned savagely as the wooden haft struck one of them in the head, its sheer velocity forcing it to puncture the Grimm mask and the skull beneath, and the halberd blade embedded itself into the heart of the other.

However, the guard whose halberd Joseph had appropriated took especial exception to her weapon being the cause of death for two of her less than agile fellows and let loose a flurry of punches with a cry of rage. Joseph deflected each strike of the woman's claws easily, but the honour guard was experienced enough that she didn't overextend any of them, preventing him from counter attacking.

 _It is a distraction._ Joseph realised. He was impressed. She was definitely angry, as every attempt to claw his face showed, but she didn't let her anger override her sense. If she wasn't a White Fang that he was about to kill for a lesson, he would have commended her.

Hearing the swish of air beside him, Joseph threw a punch towards his opponent who, having an inkling of how strong he was, blocked the strike with her aura hardened arms. Truly, aura hardening was a useful skill, allowing one's barrier to attain the consistency of steel or diamond in Joseph's case, but it didn't allow one to ignore momentum and the guard stumbled out of reach. Joseph spun around and grabbed the halberd of the guard who was trying to sneak behind him, using it as a temporary hand hold in order to kick off a high calibre dust round fired from Sienna's staff. Using his new momentum, Joseph landed next to the surprised honour guard with a downward strike on the man's outstretched arm, breaking the man's aura and breaking his arm. Screaming, the man was unable to prevent Joseph grabbing hold of his head, breaking off one of the man's antlers causing his scream to rise in pitch and viciously stab the guard through the eye with it, silencing his scream permanently as he instantly died.

With a cry of wordless rage, Sienna launched towards him with a stab from her spear-like staff, firing another round. Joseph dodged both, firing off a jab towards the top of the incoming tiger-woman who slid under his strike, on her knees using her momentum. As she passed him, she spun around with a side swipe towards his knees, which Joseph jumps over, giving her time to get to jump to her feet in order to deflect a mid-air kick. Using the momentum of the deflect during his fall, Joseph landed in front of her, blocking another swipe with his forearm. Sienna unleashed a flurry of spear strikes with another angry cry, each one blocked by an aura hardened forearm.

Joseph retaliated by simply grabbing her spear. Sienna attempted an escape by wrapping her arms around the spear and kicking off from Joseph's chest.

Unfortunately for her, the spear didn't budge, Joseph's strength was too much for even an aura enhanced kick to break.

Fortunately for Joseph, he wasn't interested in her spear, only keeping her in arm's reach.

Joseph suddenly let go, allowing gravity to do its job and let Sienna lose her balance on the vertical surface that was Joseph's chest. Before she hit the ground, Joseph's hand gripped her ankle and pulled. Joseph swung Sienna around to build her momentum and then raised her into the air by her foot and slamming her into the ground. Giving out a pained cry, the force of the impact sent her bouncing across the length of the hall, her spear still in a death grip.

Sienna looked up, her vision full of vitrol and pain until something she saw made her face fill with worry.

"No! Run!" Sienna yelled to someone behind him.

Joseph turned around too late and he felt a crab claw wrapped around his throat and the last honour guard came into view, a victorious smirk on her face. It was quickly replaced by worry when her claw failed to collapse his aura hardened oesophagus.

Joseph had suffered too many assassination attempts featuring strangulation to leave such a crippling weakness alone.

Joseph raised an eyebrow as he felt the soon-to-be-dead Faunus increase the pressure on his neck in a desperate attempt to stop him. Joseph reached out and grabbed the two halves of the claw around his throat and squeezed. The honour guard gasped in pain as her aura strained and broke in a flash of colour, and then screamed in pain as Joseph ripped the claws apart, separating the two halves from her arm.

Uncaring of the spurt of the blood spurting onto his chest from the severed appendage, Joseph grabbed the honour guard by the neck and gave her a powerful headbutt. With a snap, the Grimm mask split in half, her head letting out an equally sharp crunch as her nose collapsed under the force.

Then, like a piece of trash, Joseph flung her into the throne in the hall, destroying it and probably most of the unfortunate guard's skeleton.

Slowly, Joseph turned his head to look at Sienna and gave her a smug smile at her horrified face.

"I'll kill you." Sienna growled out, Joseph's smile growing vicious as he heard the sorrow and desperation behind her tone. "I will make you suffer for every Faunus you butchered today."

It wasn't often that he found someone who could stand up to him, for at least a little while, and it was always a treat to beat someone who had no idea who he was. Sienna was strong, and with how she was trying to eviscerate him with her glare as she got to her feet even after severely injuring her and murdering all her guards, she had the spark of the fire that all true leaders needed. Joseph knew that she would eventually have the strength to be a proper leader if she worked at it. She would be especially fun to interact with diplomatically, like he did with Ghira when he was head of the Fang, if today didn't break her first.

Thankfully, her life wasn't going to end today.

Joseph flared his aura, the blood on his chest and pants drying up and flaking away in the white glow that surrounded him.

"Well come then." Joseph goaded her, gesturing at her to come at him.

With a scream of rage, Sienna charged at him once again, launching round after round of high calibre Dust bullets square at his chest.

Joseph ignored them, letting them impact his hardened chest harmlessly.

Sienna leapt into the air, arranging her spear for a vicious plunge.

Before her eyes could register it, Joseph was next to her in mid-air and his fist had already collided with her back, sending her crashing into the ground.

She could barely struggle to her elbows before she felt the large man land fist first onto her spine.

Sienna felt her aura shatter as her spine creaked.

She shut her eyes, preparing for the end while Joseph smiled as he watched the fear of death finally fill his opponent.

Nothing happened.

"Do you know why I am here?" Joseph asked softly, Sienna's eyes opening in surprise.

"No-"

Sienna screamed as Joseph's shoe pulverised every bone in her hand.

"Don't lie." Joseph continued, his tone clearly amused. "I let your little spy in for a reason. To keep a warhawk like you happy that I wasn't going to wipe your tiny island off the map."

Joseph crouched down infront of her, looking her in the eye. It secretly made him satisfied that, even scared for her own life, she tried to save another's.

"So just be honest." Joseph advised. "Your little chameleon isn't the one I have by my boots now."

Sienna paused for a moment.

"Yes." She finally said, cradling her broken left hand. "I know what happened. A White Fang captured one of your daughters."

"So you know that this is the direct consequences of those actions?"

"Yes." Sienna whispered through gritted teeth but said nothing else.

Joseph paused.

"That's it? No pleading that it was an insubordinate cell and that this was all a mistake?"

"It was." Sienna growled out, her earlier fire returning much to Josephs approval. "But I am not an idiot. They were White Fang and I am the leader. Ghira made it at least clear on what you would do if we ever did something so stupid."

"That's good." Joseph nodded as he stood up. "Most leaders don't realise that."

"I'm not most leaders. I had even planned to fight you off if you should come." Sienna laughed, a little hysterically. "Its what Ghira said he did to stop you from killing everyone."

Joseph gave out a little chuckle as well.

"Yeah, he did do that. Got his ass kicked though. Didn't really work for you did it?"

Sienna was silent for a long moment.

"I am going to make you pay." She whispered out as she stared at the broken floorboards beneath her. "As long as I can draw breath, I won't forget this." She glared at him, her eyes promising bloody murder.

Sienna felt a chill go down her spine as Joseph gave her a bright smile.

"Can't wait for it. But in the mean time…"

Sienna screamed as Joseph's foot broke her right arm.

"I'll leave you a more material reminder."

Joseph turned around and made his way to the door out of the room.

"Oh, stay out of Mistral in the future, mmkay?" Joseph yelled out as he left, leaving Sienna Kahn to struggle to her feet.

As slowly as someone without use of either of her hands could at least.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Crassius hadn't been outside the door and it had taken over five minutes of crawling all over the corpse infested compound in order to find him, and the rest of his men at the front gates to the compound.

The compound had looked a lot nicer before Joseph and his guard had gotten there. The buildings had all been made of the best Menagire construction and timbre and not to mention the sheer amount of White Fang banners that had been hung everywhere.

Now the buildings were broken, collapsing, on fire or some combination of the three, the banners were being pissed on and burned in equal measure while a large group of guardsman, mainly Mistrali Faunus, were shouting racial slurs at the crowd of Menagerie Faunus that had gathered at the shattered front gate while another group, mainly humans, were looting the piles of butchered and dead White Fang lying about, taking both valuables and trophies. Crassius, instead of keeping order in this mess, was arguing with a group of city guard.

And by arguing, Joseph meant that he was in a big brawl with two Arc guardsmen cheering from the sides.

On the plus side for Joseph, the Arak was minding its own business by a larger pile of corpses, having an early breakfast.

"Oh, by the Gods…" Joseph mumbled to himself as he watched none other than Ghira Belladona, the panther faunus in nothing but pants and a black robe, leap into Crassius's one-man brawl against the entire security force of Menagerie while his beautiful cat-wife Kali watched the all the events around her in horror.

Joseph really didn't want to deal with them right now…

"Alright men, pack up and move out to the extraction point!" Joseph yelled, ignoring the flying form of his body guard as he landed heavily next to Joseph's feet, thrown there by an appropriately angry cat man.

At the sound of his voice, all the soldiers around him were drawn out of whatever they were doing, saluted, and quickly marched off in formation, knocking aside many a civilian in their way.

The Arak grumbled, unsatisfied with just a measly dozen Faunus it had eaten earlier today.

"Get a move on, spidey. Or am I going to have to get a rolled up newspaper for you."

Rolling its eyes at the terrible joke, Joe the Arak reluctantly followed the rest of the soldiers, the Faunus crowd giving him no trouble in getting past in their haste to get away from it.

"What about you, Crassius? Can you walk?" Joseph asked his prone companion.

"mmmgf" he replied, a clear dazed expression in his eyes as he lay on the cold, hard ground.

Joseph nodded in approval. Ghira definitely had been working on his swing. Being beaten senseless by an angry panther Faunus seemed punishment enough for his insubordination.

And great teasing material to boot!

"Joseph!" came a very familiar angry cry as Ghira stomped his way towards him. "What is the meaning of all this!?"

"Ghira!" Joseph yelled back, letting a friendly grin slip onto his face. "How are you doing, my old friend?"

"Don't start with that now, Joseph." Ghira growled, making angry hand gestures around him. "You come into MY city. Kill MY citizens and then you expect to be friendly with ME!"

"Yes." Joseph replied, not understanding the problem.

"Dammit Joseph!" Ghira stepped right up to Joseph's face, and as both of them were the same height they were literally eye to eye. "What made you think it was even appropriate to butcher hundreds of people in a different country!?"

Joseph frowned as he suddenly realised something.

"Oh, you didn't know that they kidnapped Melina, did you?"

Ghira froze, his hands stuck in mid-air, his rage leaving him like a light as he realised the enormity of what Joseph just said.

"Wait, really?"

"Yup."

"Oh." Ghira sighed as he straightend himself. "That explains everything."

Joseph nodded to his frenemy. Ghira often didn't like his reasoning for what he did but Joseph took great pains to make himself consistent. You couldn't really get mad at a person acting in a certain way if you understood their method of reasoning.

Ghira cleared his throat as he straightened his robe.

"Well." He started. "I would suggest that you take a moment to think before you believe that an atrocity committed by your troops is an appropriate message to a _civilian_ organisation."

"But an atrocity is the best message." Joseph smiled.

Ghira gave the Blond lord a blank look.

"Look." Ghira pinched the bridge of his nose. "Just… call me the next time you are planning a sudden trip here, okay? I could probably find a messaging method that doesn't involve killing and even _eating_ ," Ghira shuddered, "people."

"If they remain as stupid as they are, I can't promise anything. You know how Mistral needs its swift responses." Joseph gave Ghira an understanding look and clapped him on the shoulder. "I would like to actually come around and visit you and your wife in a friendlier setting."

"That wasn't really an invitation." Ghira gave out a long-suffering sigh.

"I'll be definitely glad to come around soon!" Joseph ignored his frenemy and slapped him jovially on the back. "So why don't you go comfort your wife for a bit? I know Kali is a strong woman but seeing an Arak for the first time can be traumatising for any Faunus."

"And yet you brought it into the middle of a city of Faunus…" Ghira mumbled out as he started walking away to the part of the crowd that Kali was located in.

Joseph started his own walk to the extraction point when he heard Ghira call out to him.

"Now get off my island and don't come back!" Ghira yelled with no actual heat to his voice.

Joseph smiled. He was totally coming back.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It was hours later until Emelia, one of the lucky White Fang members who had been out of the complex that night, had stumbled past her slain comrades in the halls and found her leader, Sienna Kahn, leaning against the steps leading to a ruined throne.

"Sienna! Oh my Gods!" Emelia yelled as she came to aid her leader. The tiger woman she so admired, and feared a little, had lain her arms to the side. Her left hand was swollen and purple while her right arm was completely broken. As she came to kneel by Sienna, her eyes opened and Emelia almost jumped back from the sheer anger in her eyes.

"Sienna… What happ-"

"No time." Sienna growled out, her anger clear despite the pains she had to be in. "Get a message to Ilia and tell her to get absolutely everyone of Adam's idiots out of Mistral."

"And Find someone to get me Adam. He needs to pay for this."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **Unfortunately, one of the big problems for writing for places besides Vale and the Faunus stuff in Rwby is that they literally have almost no depth to them in the actual show. Miles and Kerry make them a big thing in the world but because they don't fit nicely into the maiden/grimm/huntress narative they are left with almost no screentime whatsoever. Yeah, people keep referencing it but considering that the closest to actual racism is a sign on a bar wall in Vol 5, it makes it look like the Faunus are just complaining really.**

 **That, and the fact that my story is also about the world and Mistral has its own faunus, I had to create my own.**

 **So I decided to keep the pseudo whining of mainstream faunus but complicate it to an education problem rather than actual legislation and thus Faunus are 'unjustly' used as cheap labour in mines because it is one of the only jobs most of them can get and thus the SDC lobbies to keep Faunus in the lower class by increasing the costs of education so they can continue to save money.**

 **In Mistral, however, equality but not PCness was lethally enforced so while the Mistral faunus are mostly tradesmen (that type of people whose entire family is in a certain trade) they can still get out. Considering the revolution was nigh genocidal in Mistral and the Faunus there got on their feet okay in the same time, I can imagine significant friction between the two types of Faunus.**

 **Add in the fact of the scapegoating of the White Fang, and you have actual genuine racism and hatred. So in order to send a proper message, Joseph filled his 'punishment squad' with actual racists for added effect. Most Arc Guardsmen are far more chilled then this but not by much when it gets to looting and pillaging (its just a Mistral thing though).**

 **I may have screwed up here but Mistral is a hard place for hard people. Discrimination is a fact of life and I needed to get it across that Mistral is essentially the bully of the International community, which would naturally extend to their citizens.**

 **Yes, and trophy taking was as bad as it sounded.**

 **I hope you enjoyed this chapter though and I will be working on Part 2, now with more Jaune and lush hedgemazes.**


	10. 9: Radiant Horticulture (Awakening 2)

**"Look at this sword! Who wouldn't want to have this sword? The black metal, the gold highlights! Salem, you have truly outdone herself this time."**

 **"No, Sire, I truly don-"**

 **"None of your humility this time, my lady. Of all your achievements over the centuries for my ancestors, The Grimm, the mutation of the Beastmen, just take the time to enjoy the pride in the craftsmanship of this sword."**

 **"As you say, My Lord."**

 **"Does this sword have a name? It looks good enough to live in…"**

 **"No, Sire. It does not."**

 **"Then I shall name it… Crocea Mors. For their eyes will be drawn to the vibrant gold as I smite them with it."**

 **"Very… creative, My Lord."**

 **"… Laugh it up, Sorceress. For our enemies won't be,"**

 **-** Asmodeus Arc, the Overlord and his trusted Advisor before the fifteenth Fall of Mantle.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It might have sounded odd to most people, but Jaune did not like Hedge mazes.

They were huge, confusing, too green and way too easy to hide/get lost in.

Especially ones that seemed to vaguely sparkle.

"Are you sure we aren't lost?" Jaune asked their diminutive guide.

"Yes, Yes. I have been down this way before too many times to get lost. We are almost there." Gnarl spoke quickly, his small clawed feet moving him down the path at surprisingly fact pace. It wasn't really that fast, but it kept the two Hunters-in-training following behind him at a brisk walking pace.

Jaune shared a look with his partner at the antics of the elderly minion. It reassured Jaune to see his own sceptical expression mirrored on Pyrrha's face. He was happy that he wasn't the only one thinking that they were lost.

With a sigh, Jaune resigned himself to the physical state of being that was being lost and looked around and was immediately disappointed.

"You know," Jaune commented aloud. "Since this is a magical forest, I really figured that the Maze would look a lot cooler than it is."

To Jaune, the Hedge maze around him looked exactly like the Hedge maze at his family estate. The path was the same bright green grass while the path was surrounded by tall hedges that were a slightly deeper green than the grass. The only thing that was different from the other hedge maze he had been in was that the surrounding hedges were covered in hundreds of flowers in different colours and the air seemed to have some sort of… sparkles in the air, but Jaune wasn't sure if he wasn't just tired and imagining them.

Then again, the fact that the Hedges and grass around him wasn't in a process of dying and being resurrected by Light Magic told him that this place wasn't exactly mundane.

"It's really beautiful, isn't it?" Pyrrha asked as she looked around. "Its kind of embarrassing, but I've never really been in Hedge Maze before."

"Trust me, you aren't missing much." Jaune replied with a scoff.

"Why do you say that?" Pyrrha gestured to a nearby flower that they walked past. "I think a place like this is wonderful to simply… lose yourself from the world a bit, don't you agree?"

"Yes, lost." Jaune grumbled.

"Jaune, did you have an unpleasant experience in a hedge maze as a child?" Pyrrha asked softly, her eyebrow raised in curiosity. "You seem to be very on edge here.

 _You don't know the half of it._ Jaune thought to himself as half-repressed memories came to the fore of his mind. He knew first-hand that it was easy to get lost from the world in a hedge maze, because he had gotten lost in one, **Many times.** Sometimes he had gotten lost just wandering around in the maze. Sometimes he just got lost in one after a day of eating way too many sweets. Most commonly, he got lost in his family's maze because his sisters had chased him into there. Whether he had been chased in there by a pajama clad Joan, one of Olivia's weird machines or, later, by one of Melina's 'pets', he had plenty of unpleasant memories surrounding Hedge Mazes to never enter one happily again.

He also would not admit that tricking Joan into thinking the Estate's maze was malevolent and watching her burn it down was one of the best Birthday presents ever.

"No, I don't have anything against Hedge Mazes." Jaune replied instead of the truth, hoping to avoid any cliched flashbacks. "Its just that I don't really see the point in having one."

"Oh." Pyrrha replied causing Jaune to wince. "Well, I think it's beautiful anyway."

" **Thank you! It's nice to see _someone_ here appreciative of nature."** The maze wall beside them spoke as a face emerged from it, It's deep voice booming all around them.

To her credit, Pyrrha reacted to the sudden introduction with an impressive flourish as she drew her weapon and readied it in a mere second. Jaune was closest to the suddenly appearing face and, in contrast to his collected partner, let out a totally manly yelp and fell backwards onto his butt.

"Oh, It's you again." Gnarl, as what had become characteristic to the two humans with him, simply grumbled. "Don't you have a flower garden or a bunch of arranged weeds to take care of.

Satisfied that they weren't being attacked at the moment by the sound of Gnarl's grumbling, Both Jaune and Pyrrha felt themselves relax somewhat. Ever since that first 'unintentional' murder attempt by an actual forest, It had been hard for them to truly relax.

The face sent a heated glare towards the elderly goblinoid, giving Jaune the opportunity to see more of it and the sight of it would have caused his eyes to widen if they weren't already as open as far as they could be. The stranger's face hadn't erupted from the Hedge wall as actually formed out of it. Where a perfectly rational person would have expected flesh and skin likely scratched by the foolhardy practice of sticking one's head in a hedge, the face was made out of leaves and twigs with two diminutive flower bulbs acting as the eye's pupils, surrounded by leaves moulded into the shape of an Eye socket. It was as though someone decided to cut the hedge in the shape of a face and succeeded with an eerie similarity.

" **Of course, I do Gnarl.** " The plant person replied in a haughty tone of its surprisingly deep voice. " **You happen to be standing in it. Don't you remember, or have you finally grown senile after all?** "

"If I have forgotten then its because this maze looks more unkempt than some bogs I've been too." Gnarl gestured around him to the clearly immaculate hedges. "For a druid, you are especially bad at taking care of plants. I almost couldn't see your face from how uneven that hedge is."

It was a boldfaced lie. Even someone who had an irrational hatred of Hedges, like Jaune, could see that the maze was one of the most pristine places that he had ever seen. Jaune grimaced as the plant person's face screwed up into a glare, clearly taking Gnarl's verbal bait.

" **Are you sure? You haven't seen the middle of the maze yet and you aren't likely to, considering you were actually making your way out of the maze before I stopped you. I guess you must have gotten even shorter to not recognise a path that you had taken hundreds of times before.** "

The Plant face shifted to wear a smug grin as Gnarl visible fumed.

" **Or is it simply your mind going?** "

"Now you listen here-"

"Sorry," Pyrrha interrupted with a confused expression, cutting off Gnarl's retort even as the goblinoid gave her a glare. "But, just who are you?"

Spotting Pyrrha, the face seemed taken aback before wearing an embarrassed smile.

" **Ah, my apologies**." His tone lightning immensely. " **It seems my manners have atrophied over the centuries. My name is Diodenus, Arch-** "

"Arch-Tree hugger and he who is as threatening as a small stick, and probably as smart as one as well." Gnarl interrupted, a malevolent grin on his face as Diodenus glared at him.

" ** _As I was saying._ My name is Diodenus, Arch-Druid of the Seventh-Albion Circle and Guardian of the Overlord's grave.** "

"So, you are a druid?" Jaune asked as he stood up, wearily getting closer to the Animated plant face. "You are a… Um… An expert in plant magic?"

" **Yes, you are correct.** " Diodenus nodded proudly. " **I, in fact, was the foremost expert in Earth magic before I excepted my holy duty.** "

"My Lord," Gnarl spoke directly to Jaune, a slightly exasperated expression showing exactly what he thought about the current discussion. "Before you start asking him for all sorts of advice, magic or tips on how to bed the nearest fern bush, I must ask you to take what he says with a grain of salt. Or more suitably, several bags of it."

" **I daresay, my advice is a lot more trustworthy than yours, minion.** " Diodenus commented venomously who Gnarl studiously ignored.

"S- My Lord, the man decided to merge his soul with the forest itself because he was getting to old frolic in patches of dandelions. I think you can safely say that his decision-making skills are not the best."

"That doesn't sound so bad." Pyrrha complained with a strained smile while Jaune let out an agreeable hum. A lot of the books in the family library were cautionary tales on old sorcerers who put their souls in flimsy containers like books, animals or plants instead of durable items like magical swords or gemstones and rings. It seemed to be a common problem and to Jaune, it sounded like that Diodenus was just asking for something like a forest fire.

" **Why thank you, child. Its nice to see that not everyone here is as misanthropic as our resident gnome."** Diodenus replied, not hearing Jaune's internal thoughts and grinning at Gnarl's increased grumblings about gnomes. " **I must admit that I really didn't expect any visitors here. What may your names be?** "

"My name is Pyrrha Nikos." Pyrrha gestured to herself, giving the druid a small, proper bow.

"I'm Jaune, just Jaune." Pyrrha gave Jaune an asking look, to which he replied with a pointed one. Pyrrha might not have noticed, but Jaune clearly heard him say that he was the Guardian of the Overlord's grave. If the last Overlord had been an Arc, then the Guard being aware that Jaune was Jaune Arc was probably a bad idea.

" **Well, I am pleased to meet the both of you, and welcome to the forest that is me.** " Diodenus said with a genuine smile. " **And I apologise in advance for whatever hairbrained scheme Gnarl pulled you in here for. The old biscuit can't leave well enough alone.** "

"Well, he is remarkably bad at telling us what we are supposed to do," Pyrrha let out a polite, but not entirely ingenuine laugh.

"Oh, really? Let me guess, he took you all the way to the forest gate didn't he?" The druid asked with a mirthful smile.

"Well, not actually…" Pyrrha replied before regaling a greatly exaggerated story where a fuming Gnarl was the butt of many jokes in the telling.

But as everyone was focused on something, Jaune's mind was turning.

Wait… If the Druid was guarding something… And what would a maze be for but to…

He needed to get through to the centre of the maze. It felt like the right decision and, with his hand resting on the sheathed hilt of Crocea Mors, he felt that it was definitely the right choice to make. With a calming breath, Jaune opened his mouth to speak

"Hey, Diodenus?" Jaune asked the plant-like druid, drawing three pairs of eyes towards him. "If I remember correctly, you said that the centre of your maze was done pretty well."

" **Please.** " Diodenus scoffed. " **The centre of my maze has been under my care for centuries. I believe it has come out beautifully.** "

"Well, it's been a long time since I've seen a Maze's centre and," Jaune had to swallow to remove the feeling of utter disgust that had been building in his mouth, trying to pass it off as nervousness. "I have always had a love of looking at really beautiful mazes and I was wondering if you could show me the centre of the maze before we left."

Ignoring the utterly baffled look that his partner was giving him, Jaune was relieved to see Diodenus' face metaphorically light up. It also turned slightly greener but Jaune had no idea what that actually meant.

" **Of course!** " The Druid didn't shout as much as increase his already booming volume. " **I would love to show you, young man. I am sure that you would love the symmetry between the arrangement of the flowers and the placement of the vines on the central arches!"**

Suddenly, a line of dark brown root erupted from the ground, starting from Diodenus' face and running along the path and disappearing around the corner.

" **Just follow this root to the centre of the maze. You have no idea how rare visitors are, I feel I am going mad from trying to hold conversations with the beetles about the place**." Jaune was sad to see actual excitement on the plant simulacrum of his face. " **Oh, this is going to be so much fun!"**

"Shall we have a good look, Pyrrha." Jaune's voice was filled with false cheer as he nodded to his partner. Pyrrha's expression was confused but Jaune cut off her inevitable question with a more violent nod.

 _Please Pyrrha,_ Jaune mentally begged. _Please just go with it._

Pyrrha must have seen something in his expression because in a moment she smiled politely and nodded too.

"I think that would be lovely, Jaune."

As the group followed the root along the floor, Jaune was so focused on watching the hedge walls that he failed to see the Pensive expression on Gnarl's face as he followed behind.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"It's… It's beautiful." Pyrrha breathed out as they finally came into the very centre of the maze.

You couldn't disagree.

The Centre of the maze was dominated by an absolutely massive garden in the shape of a circle. All around it in a radial pattern were curved rectangular patches of multicoloured floweres, arranged in patterns with the other groups so that it looked like the colours were spiralling out of the centre. In that centre was a perfectly tended ring of flowers resting around an white, wooden arch that had vines artistically threaded through it.

Below this arch, upon a circular stone Altar, floated a blue ovaloid crystal, almost as large as he was, that glowed with light.

The crystal would have been as beautiful to him if he didn't feel the overwhelming urge to smash it. Jaune knew about genetic predispositions, it having been covered in his high school biology tutoring, and he could just feel the Light magic radiating off the crystal making every hair he had feel like it was standing on their ends. Every self-preservation instinct he had was screaming at him to destroy it before it killed him.

" **Ah, this is my pride and Joy."** Diodenus' face erupted from the path in the form of some entangled roots. " **I had started this garden back when I still had my old body and it took centuries to get everything maintained by the Light of Heaven to keep it neat. Then it took me another few decades to make it look as good as it does now."**

"Which means it looks slightly better than an oddly coloured patch of moss." Gnarl commented, the small goblinoid sneering at the surrounding scenery.

" **Your opinion doesn't count, creature."** Diodenus replied mechanically with a sigh, his voice lacking any of the heat that Jaune expected such a sentence to have.

Gnarl shot back some sort of remark but the ensuing argument faded to the back of Jaune's mind, his focus squarely on the crystal.

It felt… lethal. If felt like every piece of his body was ready to rip itself apart in order to get away from it and it was only the presence of the steel gauntlet on his hand that was preventing him from being a small puddle on the floor. He hoped that it was only his imagination that the gauntlet was feeling more snug than it had been an hour before. Looking around at the beautiful scenery around him, a dim part of Jaune realised that this must have been what Gnarl had been leading him too.

Turning to look at his partner, he spied Pyrrha staring at the crystal as well. When she saw him looking at her, Pyrrha turned her head to look at him in the eyes and gave him what she definitely thought was a reassuring smile. However, Jaune's experience of living with seven sister let him see that her smile was a little to broad, her eyes too blank for her to be perfectly fine. Jaune kind of understood that, today has been pretty trying and magic was a pretty… stressful thing to see if you didn't have an unconscious Grimm summoner as a mother and a purposeful occultist as a little sister.

"Hey, Diodenus?" Jaune asked as though he was excited, desperately trying to hide the apprehension he was feeling. "What is that crystal thing there? The one floating above that pedestal?"

" **That is the Light of Heaven."** Diodenus immediately answered, seemingly eager to find some reason to ignore Gnarl. " **It is an ancient Light Crystal, blessed by the Archangel of Death and left here to cleanse the land of the Evil that the Overlord left here in his passing."**

"Light Crystal?" Jaune asked, his brow raising. He had heard of Dark Crystals, Blood Crystals and even a Sugar Crystal before but never a light Crystal. "Is it like… a lamp?"

Diodenus' face formed into a confused frown.

"…That was a dumb question wasn't it?"

" **It's a Light Crystal… It infuses the world with Light itself… How do you not know what it is?"** Diodenus' root based face showed nothing but disbelief as he proceeded to mumble to himself, his gaze far beyond anything here. It looked pretty similar to Weiss' face when Jaune had asked her what Dust was. Not because he didn't know but because that uncomprehending look was surprisingly cute on her face.

"Ha. See!" Gnarl jeered, unrepentant in his childishness. "I told you that Good couldn't stand the test of time! Huts and glass castles will never last against caves and Dark Towers!" Gnarl, satisfied at the moment turned towards Jaune. "In answer to your question, my lord, Light crystals spread disgustingly Good magic all over the immediate area, filling it with life, happiness and _cuteness…_ "Gnarl spat out the last word with a surprising amount of venom.

"Is this what is powering the forest?"

"Mostly," Gnarl nodded. "It provides life to the forest around it, allowing it to thrive in the barren landscape around the Old tower. It was commonly used for things like that, but when the magic stopped, so too did the crystals. All of them losing power and becoming little more than particularly fancy glass."

"So if the rest broke down, why didn't this one? What makes this one so special?" Pyrrha interjected with a question, a sceptical expression on her face. Jaune could understand that, he was too.

Gnarl threw an aside look to the muttering tree person near him.

"It is as the overgrown weed said, My Lord. It probably has something to do with the fact that this crystal was made by an Archangel. Who knows what happened to Divine powers when the Magic stopped working. _Blasted self-righteous pigeons._

"Gnarl…" Jaune warned, desperately wanting to stay on topic.

"Ah, yes…" Gnarl coughed, upcoming rant thoroughly interrupted. "Regardless, if the crystal would be destroyed then the Light magic in the air will be quickly consumed by the forest itself, until it had nothing but the barren land underneath to sustain it."

"Then the forest would die." Concluded Pyrrha.

"And we could get to the Tower." Jaune finished, earning a nod from Gnarl, his brain filled with the implications.

" **Wait, what did you say?","** Diodenous spoke up in the background, but went ignored by the pondering teens and the obstinate minion.

"Yes, and there you will be able to claim the true treasure within." Gnarl confirmed, his voice filled with an enthusiasm that was very strange to Jaune. "Now all we have to do is shatter that crystal once and for all."

"Then that is what we must do." Jaune nodded. He was used to strange things happening around him and, while the presence of a magic crystal feeding a forest was definitely that, Jaune had long simply decided to take such things in stride.

It made family dinners after Melina was born significantly less incomprehensible.

He guessed Pyrrha, if not for her ability to focus through strange and stressful situations, would be reeling at all this magic like any normal person. Jaune, however, was an Arc through and through. Magic was literally in his blood, Manipulation was in his bones and smashing something was good stress-relief.

If he needed to smash a lethal glowing crystal to get into an ancient ruin, then he would. You could even say that the simplicity of the task filled him a sort of determination.

Filled with determination and quickly thinking of a plan, Jaune nodded to his partner who was looking with wide eyes behind the blond swordsman, drew his trusty sword and charged in the direction of the crystal only to slam face-first into a wall of vines that had definitely not been there several seconds before.

Bouncing off the wall onto his back, he witnessed a familiar face of plants emerge from the wall of vines.

 **"This is greatly disappointing."** Diodenus' tutted. **"I guess I should have realised that you were only here for that blasted ruin."**

Jaune scrambled to his feet and jumped back, dodging a particularly thick bundle of vines that reached out through the wall and slammed into the ground where he was lying.

 **"I should have also realised why that gauntlet looked so familiar."** The druid continued. **"it has been more than a century since I have had to deal with looters from the Dark kingdom, but I assure you that my skill has not atrophied in that time.** ".

"I don't really want to fight you…" Jaune attempted. It might have not sounded really heroic but the entirety of Jaune's plan had been to quickly smash the crystal before anyone, especially tree people, could react. "All I want to do is get into the Tower."

 **"Oh, really? So you weren't going to run up to the very lifeblood of this forest, smash it, and then run off?"**

Jaune winced. Despite how true it was, it did sound pretty bad when you said it like that.

"Jaune is right!" Pyrrha yelled out, much to Jaune's relief, Miló and Akoúo̱ already drawn and ready. "We just need to get into the Tower. Please just unblock the way and we will just go."

The tension in the air rose as Diodenus _laughed_ , it sounded like someone was rhythmically banging thin sticks together.

 **"Even should I be tempted to avoid any potential destruction to my forest, I am sworn to protect that accursed ruin."** Diodenus smiled. **"Pursuing the remnants of the Tower is sheer folly regardless. What lies within that den of Evil would either kill you or be useless to you either way. I'm just saving you the disappointment."**

Jaune felt whatever optimism he still had sink as he saw a few root tendrils erupt from the ground by the foliage wall. The brown roots stood out against the multitude of green vines behind them, only letting Jaune more easily see the

"Wait!" Jaune yelled out, wracking his brain for anything that could possibly help him out of this. "Isn't killing us against the druid code or something!?"

Jaune waited with baited breath as the Druid's face morphed, literally morphed, itself into a frown. It was a really long shot in the dark but from what Jaune could remember, all of the childhood stories he had heard as a small boy painted Druids as stupid pacifistic ecologists. As the seconds ticked on and Diodenus' left eyebrow rose, Jaune really hoped that, like many things today, that life was just like a fairy tale.

" **No, it is not."** Diodenus thoroughly destroyed Jaune's hopes and dreams.

"Yup," Gnarl chimed in from somewhere unseen, his voice far enough for Jaune to realise that Gnarl had taken the time to make a hasty retreat from the area.

Pyrrha sighed, tightening her grip on her weapons.

"Oh." Jaune concluded, his tone indicating his immense reluctance at attacking a forest with only a sword and shield.

" **Now stand still."** Diodenus commanded as the roots and tendrils rushed towards the two Mistralians.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In the end, no one really stood still, except maybe Diodenus but, as a forest, it was pretty hard for him to move in the first place.

The first attack had come towards Pyrrha. A spiked root attempting to stab her in her chest was expertly deflected with the edge of her shield while she spun away to avoid the horizontal spikes along its length. As befit the experience of a Mistralian tournament champion, no movement was wasted as she let her momentum give the vertical swing with her weapon, in sword mode, to cut through a bundle of vines swinging for her head. Using the motion of the swing, she did a mid-air somersault to avoid another spiked root swinging where her feet used to be.

Jaune in the meanwhile was… he was…

If Pyrrha's movements were like a flowing river then Jaune's were like a rock.

Jaune had practised for weeks to be able to draw Crocea Mors and extend its sheath shield in less than three seconds. That was just barely enough time to fully block the spiked root that was coming for him directly. With a mighty clang, the weaponised plant root smacked head first into his shield with a surprising lack of force, failing completely to move Jaune at all.

"What?" Jaune asked in disbelief has he eyed the retracting root past the lip of his shield, just in time to see a bundle of vines being swung at his head from the direction of the plant wall.

Jaune swung the white blade in his hand at the incoming attack, hoping to cut it in half. The vine bundle was moving too fast and easily moved around his swing, flipping around behind him to strike from another angle.

Jaune knew he wasn't fast enough to turn to block it. When he had been masochistic enough to spar against Nora, she had also done the same, dodge his attack to leap over his head and slam her hammer into his back before he could turn around. Jaune closed his eyes and grit his teeth as he prepared to weather the inevitably heavy blow from the vine bundle.

Which it did, without the pain or force that one would have expected of something so heavy.

"What?" Jaune repeated, watching the vine retract from his back, moving sluggishly as though it was as confused as he was.

A spiked root erupted from a nearby flower bed, stabbing towards Jaune with such suddenness that he couldn't even brace his shield against the impact when he blocked with it.

It felt like a gentle shove on his shield.

Jaune lashed out but the retreating root was too fast to get cut by his unfortunately, very much telegraphed, strike. He however, was not paying attention on his current martial failures but rather on the more novel strangeness happening around him at that moment.

 _Why didn't these things hurt?_ Jaune questioned himself. _Were they just too light?_

Another bundle of Vines came down vertically above him. Ignoring his instinct to raise his shield above himself, he sidestepped the attack, letting it strike the ground with a massive crash.

That was the exact sound that something heavy made when hitting the ground at high speed. He should know, he was present for more than one of his Dad's budget meetings.

All of a sudden, he spied his partner in his peripheral vison. Somehow, using arcane techniques unknown to Jaune, she was duelling at least a dozen vine bundles and spiked roots at a time. Jaune saw her just in time however for the strain of so many opponents to cause her to make a mistake and get blindsided by a vine bundle, sending her flying with a heavy impact that she recovered from quickly.

 _No, these things are definitely heavy._ Jaune concluded. _But then why…_

Jaune's thoughts trailed off as he noticed the central gem on the Gauntlet encompassing his left hand was glowing an intense red compared to its normal vague orange glow. Dimly, he noticed that the light reflected weirdly off his shield.

"Ooh," came Gnarl's voice from the top of a nearby Hedge. "It seems that the Gauntlet has realised your mortal peril and is currently channelling your mana into increased strength and durability. Nice to see it bonding to someone's life so quickly. It must have gotten so lonely. While a lovely gesture you have to be careful now, My Lord."

It took a several seconds of thought before Jaune realised why.

"Wait, you mean this thing is- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGH!" Jaune yelled out as a spiked root scraped across his back, cutting a line through his hoodie and scaping the skin on his back. It didn't draw blood but the scraping caused by the perpendicular spikes Normally aura would have prevented an attack like this from happening but…

" **Thank you for telling me his one weakness, you incompetent ear wax dispenser.** " Diodenus jeered at Gnarl.

"Oh, don't act like you didn't work it out already!" Gnarl retorted.

Jaune took one heated look at his Gauntlet, the gauntlet that had thought it was a good idea to eat his aura to give him extra strength and "durability".

So, in video-game terms, it had replaced his regenerating Anti-everything shield with super strength and a higher armour value.

Jaune understood gaming terms. He knew a bad trade-off when he saw one.

"Stupid magic." He commented to no-one In particular.

Looking up from behind his shield, Jaune saw three large spiked roots hovering menacingly infront of him.

Despite the adrenaline in his veins, the minor gibbering panic at fighting animated plants that should not exist and the violent defiance of the Hero trainee that he wanted to become, there was a small part of him that was simply Jaune Arc that had one, last sarcastic comment to itself before the lead Spiked root could finish rearing back for a lunge.

 _This is going to be a long day_ …

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Unfortunately, the fight that Jaune found himself embroiled in for at least ten minutes was no epic duel against a champion of a thousand battles or some desperate heroic struggle against a massive monster.

Admittedly, the fight was extremely engrossing to Jaune himself, being an active participant and all, but to any outside observer, it was a particularly boring stalemate.

Like a tennis round that had been going on for fourty minutes or so.

Jaune was particularly aware from this opinion by the exaggerated snoring of the Elderly minion in a destroyed flowerbed, far away from any action.

It was an odd combination of factors that led to this exact situation. Thanks to his extra toughness, the Vine bundles were completely incapable of hurting him, but the extra toughness and strength had completely consumed his aura, leaving the spiked roots as the only things still fatal for the Arc scion.

So, not being an idiot, Diodenus had redirected the vine bundles towards the great threat that was Pyrrha Nikos and left all the spiked roots to deal with Jaune.

Fortunately for him, he was fast enough to block every single strike that he could block and dodge every attack that he couldn't.

Unfortunately, Jaune had neither the technique or speed in order to actually hurt of the any tendrils before that could pull back.

With Jaune not able to stop the attacks against him, and Diodenus unable to score anymore hits against the blonde knight, it became more and more obvious that the true fighter in the area was, infact, Pyrrha who was now dealing with about thirty vines and roots at the same time.

" **You know, you are just tiring yourselves out.** " Diodenus' voice echoed from the forest around the two fighters. " **I will never tire while your vigor will slowly be worn away in time, no matter how much you may have. Your defeat will be drawn out and inevitable."**

As far as taunts went, Jaune had heard better but he couldn't deny that Diodenus was wrong. While it was almost no effort for Jaune to fend off the Plant based attacks, he was utterly incapable of being a threat either while being pinned in his own little section of the Garden.

The same could not be said about Pyrrha.

From what he managed to see of her, Jaune would almost say that she was in an elaborate dance. Every movement led into some other movement. A slash led into a spin, the spin led into a deflect which led into a backwards flip. To someone like Jaune, it looked completely amazing.

However, it couldn't last forever. Pyrrha was many things but she was still mortal and eventually those things had a habit of getting tired and all it would take would be one bad mistake for Diodenus to make sure that she wouldn't make another one. To Jaune, Diodenus' simple strategy was plain to see. Keep Jaune isolated in his little corner of the garden and then send most of his roots and vines to tire out and kill the obviously more skilled Pyrrha. Then overwhelming the grief-stricken Knight would be easy as pie.

That was exactly what was happening now and it was the basis for Jaune's own plan.

Jaune knew that Diodenus had to split his attention between Jaune and Pyrrha, and he knew that Pyrrha, being more dangerous and more defeatable, Diodenus would end up focusing more on his partner than himself. With lessened attention, came sluggish attacks and less vines to deal with as they were moved over to try and deal with Pyrrha.

So, how did one convince someone to see themselves as less of a threat to get the opening needed to escape and smash the glowing crystal once and for all?

It was easy. Just pretend to be less of one.

Over the last five minutes, Jaune had been forcing himself to block progressively slower, to have wider swings of his sword and to breathe a lot heavier than what was probably healthy for him. It was all the signs of someone becoming tired and it was working perfectly.

What had started out as about five roots had been reduced to two as the Druid was fooled into thinking that, just maybe, Jaune was a lot weaker than he thought.

Jaune hid a smile as he saw the one of the roots hesitating before striking him again, being blocked by a forcefully sluggish movement of his shield. It seemed that Diodenus was predictably thinking about leaving the **obviously** tired huntsman in order to overwhelm the Huntress who could still stand up straight.

Jaune shot a worried look towards his partner. Pyrrha had given up going on the attack, merely content with deflecting and dodging the blows from over forty plant appendages simultaneously. If Jaune were honest with himself, that was the biggest flaw in his plan, the fact that every root that he didn't have to deal with would be immediately going to her, increasing the burden of keeping herself alive by a significant amount each time. Even from here he could see that the sheer number of opponents were taking their toll. Her movements, once a seamless dance, were becoming more stilted and he swore that he could see a sheen of sweat from the constant exertion that Pyrrha had been under for over ten minutes.

Jaune needed to finish this quickly, or, as he realised in horror, that the beautiful and nice girl known as Pyrrha Nikos wouldn't exactly be his partner anymore.

He would also probably die too. That was pretty important.

So, with a forced shuddering breath, Jaune stumbled for a single step.

That was enough to make up Diodenus' mind and one of the spiked roots was pulled into the ground, only to erupt again next to Pyrrha.

 _Okay, Jaune. Showtime._

The last spiked root stabbed forwards again, and Jaune dropped the entire pretence. His shoulders straightened, he stood up to his full height and dodged sideways, past the tip of the root. Crocea Mors swept downwards, cleaving right through the distracted root and Jaune took of running.

He couldn't hear anything but his own heartbeat as he approached the glowing crystal in the centre. The pessimistic part of his brain was telling him that this would be the point that he would side checked by a sudden vine or root or the grass below would ensnare his feet, stopping him in his tracks.

Nothing managed to stop him as he made it to the crystal, his skin crawling from its radiance, and with a mighty cry, Jaune swung Crocea Mors at the crystal.

It struck the crystal with a resounding, and definitively metallic clang.

It was like the world stood still for several seconds as Jaune waited for something to happen, but nothing did. His sword remained against the crystal, not even any cracks or even a chip to acknowledge the blow from Jaune's sword.

Jaune looked behind himself to see that the world had actually seemed to have frozen as well. He saw the various plant appendages hanging idle in the air, pointed to him as though the eyeless vines and roots were staring at him. He could see Pyrrha staring at him with wide eyes, her shoulders slightly slouched from exertion. He saw Gnarl a further bit away, one claw rubbing his forehead with a pained expression.

But, more importantly to Jaune, he saw Diodenus' face rising out of a nearby flowerbed, a large smile on his simulated face.

" **Unfortunately, my dear boy."** Diodenus began, the smile on his face grew. " **I was not lying when I said that your quest was fruitless. The crystal, having been blessed by the Archangel of Death itself, is immune to all effects of entropy, including the damage of the physical and time."**

Jaune could feel the entire floor drop out from under him and he figured that his eyes must have been as wide as Pyrrha's was right now.

 _All of this was useless?_ Jaune asked himself. _No wonder he wasn't worried when this began. We had no hope of breaking the crystal in the first place._

" **Now don't fill your heart with despair, child."** Diodenus' voice dragged Jaune back to the present as a series of spiked roots erupted around the crystal's altar, each one towering over and pointing menacingly at the blonde knight. " **After you have perished, I will pray so that your soul will be purged of your earthly sins. Now hold still. Struggling will make your passing a rather, unpleasant experience."**

Out of fear or the need to have some distance to defend from the murderous plants, he didn't know but what he did know is that he took a small step back, tripped on the lip of the altar's pedestal and fell backwards.

Thankfully, he managed to catch himself with his left hand, using the floating crystal as support.

Then everything changed.

Diodenus let out an unholy scream of pain, his face ripping apart into its component plant parts as his voice echoed from the forest itself. All around him, he saw the spiked roots suddenly begin to rot and collapse to the ground, the ones around Pyrrha doing the same. All at once, Jaune heard a cacophony of animal cries from the forest, most of them were in pain but quite a few of them were in a tone that Jaune recognised.

Those were cries of victory.

All around him, he could see flowers, hedges, even trees in the distance begin to wilt, lose leaves and even die outright.

Jaune turned his head to the crystal and the first thing he could see was a dark purple stain spreading slowly across the radiant blue crystal, it glow dimming.

At its centre was Jaune's hand, the Gauntlets orange crystal glowing brightly.

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Author's Note+

So guys, this was meant to be about two times longer but... I am not going to lie. I have terrible confidence in any writing skills I may/may not have and thus I wasn't really comfortable with the direction that this fic was going so it just got harder and harder to write as the chapter got Larger. As a indicator to sate my raging insecurity I am posting this chapter to see if you guys like whats happening here and If I am sill maintaining the quality I aspire too.

And in regards to the Adam character short...

GOSH DARNIT. I HAD ORIGINALLY PLANNED FOR SIENNA TO HAVE A KUNAI AND CHAIN BUT I THOUGHT IT DIDN'T FIT HER INSPIRATION AS A TIGER. NOW I FEEL UNENDING RAEGE

But no seriously, I burst out laughing at the irony when I saw her weapon was literally Kunai and chain.

Hope you Enjoyed the Writing!


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